A 37-year-old Swedish man from Stockholm managed to convince a friend to serve his prison sentence for him.  He even paid him for taking on the ‘convict sitting’ post.

Prison officials have admitted that they did in fact have the wrong chap, and that he had managed to serve two thirds of his mates one year sentence before being rumbled. In fact, he probably would have got away with it (if that’s the right expression in this case) had it not been for a routine visit by a police officer who wanted to ask the prisoner a few routine questions… only to find a completely different man sitting in front of him to the one he had arrested.

What happens now to the ‘false convict’ is unclear, but the man who should have been serving the sentence is believed to be living it up in the Phillipines. He was convicted on several charges which included, handling smuggled goods, medical crime and even copyright infringements. The false prisoner was released immediately and an international warrant put out for the real ‘bad boy.’

The reason they managed to get away with it? Well, it boils down to an extremely well forged drivers licence and a similar passport.

It is unknown how much the false prisoner was paid to share a cell with a tattooed, two metre tall Swede with a leaning towards wearing women’s underwear, but however much it was… it wasn’t enough.