Residence permits for Sweden are available on the black market for just EUR 2,000, which would then allow the buyer to travel freely across Europe. Read the full story

The alleged embezzlement of tens or hundreds of millions of Icelandic kronur by a staff member at Old Kaupthing Bank is under police investigation. The woman accused of misappropriating the funds was sacked when the issue first came to light. Read the full story

Merchants at Kouvola’s China Centre market were left stunned last week, after a surprise immigration raid in the southern Finnish city. Read the full story

Twelve charges of fraud, in addition to sex offences, have led to the indictment of a would-be western Swedish practitioner. Read the full story

On  September  5, 2009 , Bloomberg reported that the Mitsubishi Corp. internet shopping unit lost credit card details on 52,000 customers after its servers were hacked from overseas. In July 2009, the Japanese Insurance firm Alico said the suspected leak of its customers’ credit card information may have led to about 2,200 cases of credit card fraud. The company mentioned that credit card information related to up to 130,000 insurance contracts may have leaked. Read the full story

The Icelandic government has submitted a bill to parliament which would allow the assets of people under investigation by the State Tax Investigation office to be frozen.

The bill’s explanatory statement says the aim is to prevent people avoiding their tax obligations by moving funds or assets from their own names to other people. Read the full story

Kaupthing Bank loaned its staff a total of ISK 47.3 billion (in the region of USD 640 million at the time) solely to buy its own shares in 2006 alone. This comes from the tabloid DV newspaper which claims to have a complete copy of the Kaupthing 2006 loan book in its possession. The newspaper reports, among other things, that Kristjan Arason, then head of commercial banking was granted ISK 893 million in so called ‘bullet loans’. Arason is the husband of former Independence Party Minister of Education Thorgerdur Kartin Gunnarsdottir. Read the full story

Stein Bagger, the fugitive chief executive of the now-defunct IT Factory, has been extradited to Denmark after he turned himself in to authorities in Los Angeles. The 41 year-old CEO faces charges of forgery and rampant fraud during his tenure as head of IT Factory, allegedly defrauding investors and banks of nearly 1 billion kroner through a leasing scam. Read the full story

Evidence has come to light that some Norwegian university students are cheating the system. It would appear that the students are collecting student aid they are not entitled to. The news comes in the wake of a scandal facing Norwegian ex-parliament members accused of tweaking their pension benefits.

The same newspaper that broke the MP pension story, Dagsavisen, also discovered that university students are using fake addresses to claim they are living independent of their parents. By living alone, the students are Read the full story

According to reporters for The Local, a Swedish newspaper, foreign students studying at universities in Sweden have been targeted by fraudsters. Students from abroad have been tricked out of their identities and had products bought in their name.

Waseem Akhtar, a student from Pakistan, was studying at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH) to become an IT engineer when he encountered the fraudsters. He had been in Sweden for just a few months when he received a false notification from the Tax Authority (Skatteverket) in the mail, claiming he had moved.

Luckily, Akhtar took note of the notice and contacted the Skatteverket and rectified the change, but in the meantime the new Visa card he had ordered had disappeared.

“How can Skatteverket change my address without checking with me? I did not think that anything could go wrong with the Swedish system,” Akhtar said.

Unfortunately something had gone wrong, as Akhtar began receiving notifications in the mail of purchases he had not made. The Swedish Enforcement Authority (Kronofogdemyndigheten) also sent him notices of unpaid bills. In total, Akhtar now owes more than 50,000 kronor (USD 8,250) for goods he never authorised.

Unfortunately there is very little the students can do, particularly if the police are unable to locate the fraudsters. A spokesperson for Skatteverket advised students to contact companies directly about the unauthorised purchases as soon as possible.