Hoffmann’s takeover of the Aspsås prison drug trade begins as a carefully staged change of power: he discredits and removes the prison’s three main dealers, then introduces a new supply under his own name. The operation is built to serve two opposing ends. It establishes Wojtek’s control inside the prison while giving the Swedish police information that could eventually expose the organization beyond its walls.

Entry into a Closed Institution

For Piet Hoffmann, arrival at Aspsås prison is a threshold crossed after extensive preparation. He has mapped the buildings from the church tower and, while on remand, studied the prisoners and staff in Block G with Erik Wilson’s help. Yet this is his first time inside the high-security prison itself. After processing, he spends ten days in near-total isolation: most of each day in a five-square-meter cell, without visitors or ordinary media. The deprivation makes the outside world distant and sharpens his awareness of how much isolation intensifies longing.

When he is brought into the unit, Hoffmann learns its ordinary routines from the principal officer: where to go, when the doors lock, and how the unit operates. These details are part of the takeover’s practical groundwork. The prison is a closed system of controlled movement, scheduled access, and limited contact, so authority depends not only on possessing drugs but on learning how people, information, and goods pass through its spaces.

Hoffmann makes his arrival visible rather than waiting cautiously for acceptance. He takes a seat in the television corner before the other prisoners return, choosing a position from which he can see them and they can see him. He occupies another man’s favored chair and begins a game of solitaire with marked cards, small public breaches of convention that announce he will not behave like a frightened newcomer. His targets are two Wojtek members serving long sentences, Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki. They have already prepared the ground by discussing Hoffmann’s arrival and circulating prison and police records obtained through Stefan’s lawyer. At supper, two older prisoners demand to see his papers. Hoffmann allows the encounter to proceed; the challenge gives him a chance to establish standing through the prison’s informal codes of respect and hostility.

Removing the Existing Dealers

The first decisive move is not an open contest over customers but the elimination of the prison’s established suppliers. Hoffmann has forty-two grams of amphetamine, described as thirty-percent strength, concealed in four library books. He uses it to bring down the three principal dealers. A search of the Greek prisoner’s cell finds a bag containing fourteen grams behind a curtain rail, and two more bags of the same amount turn up in cells on different floors of Block H. Three prisoners are removed from Aspsås; the Greek is to be transferred to Kumla or Hall, while the others will also spend their last night in the prison.

The operation depends on making the discovery look like a consequence of routine security rather than a challenge to the existing market. Hoffmann is searched and his cell is inspected, but the material sought there is not found. He accepts the outward role of a criminal under scrutiny, including the suspicion and hostility directed at prisoners thought to be informants. Once the searches have done their work and the rival dealers are gone, he can treat their removal as the opening in which a new supplier may appear.

The effect is immediate but not yet secure. After nearly four hours of sleep, Hoffmann braces himself against the risk of attack during a brief period when guards cannot see or hear what happens in his cell. A pillow, a chair, and a sock at the door are part of his precaution. His fear does not cancel the operation; it defines its conditions. He must survive long enough for the new market to form, while behaving with enough confidence that other prisoners recognize his authority.

Building a New Supply Network

The next stage uses fifty yellow tulips delivered through the prison’s administrative setting. The buds conceal small packages of chemical amphetamine, manufactured with flower fertilizer in a factory in Siedlce. Hoffmann removes the contents from fifteen buds at once while the prison governor is away from the room, then hides the packages among what appears to be ordinary waste on his cleaning cart. Later he retrieves the concealed supply in a blind spot between security cameras. A teaspoon from a discarded cup gives him a consistent measure, and he divides the powder into seventy-five portions of two grams each.

The packaging and movement are as important as the quantity. Hoffmann wraps the portions in plastic and conceals them beneath the rubbish liner’s contents. He keeps eleven sales on him and leaves the remaining portions to move through other hands and prison buildings. He tells prisoners to order from Stefan and collect through him, using the existing relationships of his Wojtek associates as a distribution channel. The network is therefore not simply a pile of drugs in one cell: it is a controlled route from hidden stock to individual customers, with a recognizable supplier and intermediaries.

The first distribution is deliberately limited. Hoffmann will not give a customer more than two grams at the outset, even if the customer begs or threatens him. The seventy-five portions are intended to reach seventy-five imprisoned drug users, each beginning a debt to the new ruler of the market. At the first unit-level round, five of the eleven customers can pay from substantial criminal proceeds; six cannot afford even their clothing and are treated as future labor for Wojtek outside prison. The drug trade thus binds immediate consumption to longer-term control, converting unpaid debt into a source of criminal work.

Two Objectives, and the Risk of Exposure

For Wojtek, the first sales establish a new supplier in one of Sweden’s most secure prisons and begin the organization’s expansion into the prison market. For the Swedish police, Hoffmann’s position is valuable because it can reveal supplies, delivery dates, and distribution channels. The plan is to let the operation grow until Wojtek has gained control but has not yet spread into another prison; at that point, Hoffmann’s information may reach the organization’s center in Warsaw. The same successful takeover that strengthens Wojtek is meant to make its structure legible to the police and, eventually, vulnerable to destruction.

That double purpose leaves Hoffmann dependent on people who are both his partners and a potential threat. Stefan and Karol Tomasz help remove competitors and carry news of the new supply, but Hoffmann knows that Wojtek’s members would become his executioners if they learned he was Paula, his undercover identity. Later, one of the four people he had regarded as protection and a possible route to escape is revealed as the person who exposed him. The takeover’s rise therefore contains its own instability: the authority Hoffmann builds through secrecy depends on a network that can also betray him.

When the danger of exposure reaches him, Hoffmann seeks voluntary isolation rather than pretending that prison offers an easy escape. A riot squad escorts him from Block G to the unit in Block C, where prisoners requesting isolation can move within a separate unit but cannot encounter inmates from other parts of the prison. The transfer interrupts the public phase of his market-building, but it does not erase what the takeover has accomplished. The event establishes Hoffmann as the new supplier, demonstrates how quickly prison hierarchy can be altered through control of drugs and information, and exposes the narrow margin between undercover authority and the danger of being recognized.