All the family members who were convicted of extensive cheating with social security benefits in multicultural Södertälje appealed their sentences. Now, when the Court of Appeal’s judgement is handed down, the mother is acquitted – and all the others, apart from one man, have their sentences reduced. This is reported by SVT.
In December 2024, several members of the family were convicted in the district court of having swindled more than SEK 5 million over a period of four years.
The indictment concerned payments from Försäkringskassan for the care of the father of the family after a stroke. The defendants included people with occupations such as police officer, lawyer and pilot.
The siblings worked as personal assistants for their father, but on several occasions they were at their regular jobs during the shifts.
The evidence also shows that they also went on holiday together while helping their father.</p
The siblings and a son-in-law were sentenced in the district court to between 1½ years and 2 years and 9 months in prison for gross social security fraud.</p
The siblings will now have their sentences reduced by a few months, while the son-in-law’s sentence will be upheld.
According to the Court of Appeal, the number of times the family has lied about taking care of the father in the family is somewhat fewer than the District Court had found.
The father in the family is still considered innocent.
The Swedish Bar Association has previously warned that the lawyer would be disbarred if he was convicted. Last autumn, the lawyer resigned from the association, according to the organisation.
The police authority has also announced that the police officer will be dismissed if he is convicted.
According to the Court of Appeal’s judgement, the pilot has stated that he has lost his pilot’s licence in both Sweden and Norway.
Sweden: Sharp increase in children under 15 brought to court
According to the organisation Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (SKR), welfare crime costs society large sums of money. But it is rare for the municipalities’ police reports to be taken further.
“There are extremely few,” says Christina Kiernan, an expert at SKR, to SVT.
Among other things, it took two years of investigation before the police were able to show that several family members in Södertälje were not with their sick father. Something they wrote in their timesheets when they cheated the municipality and social security for assistance payments.
SKR calls this type of crime welfare crime. In total, it costs Swedish society tens of billions of kronor every year, yet municipalities rarely investigate police reports.
Last year, SKR launched a new strategy to strengthen municipalities in their efforts to combat welfare crime.
<“We hope that more municipalities will work more systematically to look for this type of crime,” says Christina Kiernan.
She explains that the police estimate that criminal networks in Sweden have a turnover of up to SEK 150 billion. Incorrect payments, fraud and the like can account for up to half of the criminal economy.
What can be done to reduce the number of dropped police reports? According to Christina Kiernan, the police should ideally avoid receiving reports by increasing their ability to detect attempts at welfare crime as early as possible.
<“There are no tools here today. We do not have the ability to fully control. There will be relaxations in the duty of confidentiality that will make this better. But we still need more tools,” she says.
Sweden: “The healthcare sector is infiltrated by organised crime”
A report from the Swedish police in December 2025 showed that half of the 166 companies surveyed that provide assistance to people with disabilities are being exploited in crime by the company’s management. Several of the companies have links to known criminal networks.
The health and care sector in Sweden “has been infiltrated by organised crime”, another report showed in April 2025. Welfare services have become a lucrative source of income for criminal gangs.