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POLICE

Ticket company CEO suspected of fraud

The CEO of ticket resellers Biljett Nu has been arrested on suspicion of fraud, reported Swedish media on Saturday, as the company has sold tickets to Bruce Springsteen’s two Gothenburg concerts and then failed to deliver.

“I can confirm that this involves the company CEO,” said police spokesman Peter Adlersson to the TT news agency.

The man was brought in for questioning just outside the Ullevi concert arena in Gothenburg, moments before the concert was due to begin at 8pm Friday.

He was then arrested, under suspicion of fraud.

“Money was found on him. I can’t confirm the exact sum, but it’s quite a significant amount anyway,” said Adlersson.

According to Anders Olofsson of the police’s fraud unit, selling a product that turns out not to be available is not necessarily a crime.

“If it’s a serious company that wants to make its customers happy, and they were convinced it would be possible to obtain tickets, but then failed to do so, they haven’t done anything illegal,” Olofsson said to the TT Spektra news agency.

For the police to become involved, the company has to have shown direct intent to trick its customers.

“However, if they were selling tickets despite knowing that there were none, that’s a different situation,” Olofsson said.

Biljett Nu sells advance sale tickets for events by buying and trading tickets on the second hand market. It says on the company’s website that entrance to the event is guaranteed as soon as the ticket is paid.

There is no information about tickets not always being guaranteed.

It’s unclear how many were left without a ticket for Friday’s concert at Ullevi, and how many still have no ticket for Saturday evening’s show.

“It’s impossible to say. We get tickets all the time, so some people will get their ticket after all. But we’re going to have to continue making calls for Saturday’s concert. There aren’t enough tickets,” said Biljett Nu’s Robert Jakobsson to TT Spektra.

According to the company, all customers left without tickets will be compensated.

“We’re very sorry. They’ll have to mail us their account numbers and we’ll reimburse them,” said Jakobsson.

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POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

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