A significant legal error occurred on Thursday in a large money laundering case at the Helsingør Court (Retten i Helsingør) in Denmark. The owner of a former temp agency was originally sentenced to three and a half years in prison, but due to a human error in the court record, it was incorrectly stated that the sentence was two and a half years. The mistake happened when the ruling was documented outside of a court hearing, and the judge accidentally wrote the number “two” instead of “three” in the records.

The Helsingør Court confirmed the error on Friday morning and announced that the ruling would be corrected as soon as possible. The individual found guilty, who was responsible for laundering approximately 40 million Danish kroner (about 5.7 million euros), was convicted according to the indictment from the National Special Crimes Unit (National enhed for Særlig Kriminalitet – NSK).

Special Prosecutor Lisette Jørgensen explained that the method of money laundering involved the use of false invoices, where the money was deposited into the temp agency’s accounts and then channeled to both Danish and foreign accounts. On Friday, NSK issued a press release stating the corrected sentence of three years and six months.

According to NSK, the court found it proven that the individual laundered a total of 41.8 million kroner from March 2020 to July 2021 and attempted to launder an additional 1.2 million kroner. The money laundering operation involved four different companies and the private account of a 78-year-old woman, who received a sentence of ten months in conditional prison for her involvement in the money laundering case.