Piet Hoffmann takes over the Aspsås prison drug trade

Piet Hoffmann’s takeover of the drug trade at Aspsås Prison begins before he has ever entered the prison. He arrives with detailed knowledge of its people and routines, then uses carefully staged discoveries to remove established dealers and establish himself as a new supplier. The operation depends not only on drugs, but on reading the prison as a closed system: its searches, records, schedules, blind spots, and prisoner hierarchies all become instruments of the takeover.

Planning and arrival

Hoffmann had mapped the prison buildings from the church tower and, while on remand, had learned about prisoners and staff in Block G with Erik Wilson’s help. Yet the information did not make his first entry into Aspsås Prison familiar. After arriving under guard, being registered, and receiving prison clothes, he waited in a sterile room without speaking. The distinction matters: he knows the institution as a plan, but must still enter it as a prisoner and live under its controls.

The first ten days establish the pressure of that transition. For twenty-three hours each day, Hoffmann remains in a five-square-metre cell behind a metal door, without visitors, newspapers, television, or radio. The confinement is designed to break resistance and produce compliance. After it, the prospect of other people’s presence has become something he has missed, even as the shared unit will expose him to the prison’s informal rules and risks.

When the unit is empty, a principal officer shows him its routines, including where to use the facilities and the precise time for lock-in. Hoffmann then takes up a position in the television corner before the other fifteen prisoners return. He has studied their photographs and backgrounds, but the placement is also a deliberate announcement: he makes himself visible in a favored chair, uses marked cards, and begins solitaire at another prisoner’s table. These small breaches of etiquette present him as someone who will not wait quietly for acceptance or permission.

Establishing a prisoner identity

Hoffmann is looking for Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, two of the four Wojtek members serving long sentences at Aspsås. They are meant to help him remove the competition and seize the market; if his identity as Paula is exposed, they could instead become his executioners. Before his arrival, the two have prepared the ground by talking about him and obtaining copies of his criminal records, intelligence database entries, prison records, and most recent judgment through Stefan’s lawyer. His new standing is therefore built on information that appears official as well as on his own performance.

At supper, two older prisoners demand to see his papers and press him with questions. Stefan and Karol Tomasz begin to intervene, but Hoffmann signals them to hold back. He allows the exchange to proceed, treating it as a test of respect rather than a confrontation to be prevented. The encounter draws on a shared hostility toward sex offenders, but also demonstrates that his allies’ advance work has not removed the need to establish his position in person. He answers the challenge by objecting to the men sitting too close, not by retreating from the scrutiny.

Removing the existing dealers

Hoffmann’s first decisive move is to place amphetamine in Block H. Two plastic bags, concealed behind curtain rails and previously hidden down a toilet waste pipe, are in position before the search. A prison dog finds a bag taped behind a curtain rail; it contains fourteen grams of high-quality amphetamine. The prisoner in that cell is removed and faces transfer to Kumla or Hall to serve the rest of a sentence that has now grown longer. Two more bags, each holding the same amount, are found in other cells on the upper and lower floors. Three prisoners are consequently removed from Aspsås.

The planted supply totals forty-two grams of amphetamine described as 30 percent strength. Hoffmann uses it to fell the prison’s three main dealers, and the operation is reported to Warsaw and the deputy CEO. Those recipients treat the reports as confirmation that the next stage can begin. For Hoffmann, the discoveries also produce an immediate change in his own state: after lying on his bed amid the danger of discovery, he can smile for the first time since entering the prison. The established market has been disrupted, but a vacancy alone does not guarantee control; the next step is to supply it.

Building a new market

A second supply is concealed in yellow tulips. The flowers contain knotted condoms holding chemical amphetamine produced with flower fertilizer rather than acetone at a factory in Siedlce, which accounts for their strong tulip smell. While delivering a cart of flowers to the governor’s office, Hoffmann waits until the prison warden, Lennart Oscarsson, has stepped into a neighboring office. He removes the packets from fifteen opened buds and drops them into the cart’s garbage bag. The ordinary administrative delivery provides cover for a substantial transfer of contraband.

Hoffmann keeps the packets hidden beneath the visible rubbish on the cart, so that a casual glance reveals envelopes and plastic cups rather than drugs. He later retrieves fifty condoms containing a total of 150 grams of amphetamine. Using a teaspoon from one of the cups to measure level two-gram portions, he divides the supply into seventy-five small packets and conceals them beneath refuse in a large bin liner. The precise measure links logistics to power: his initial sales will be limited to two grams per prisoner, regardless of demands or threats.

The intended customers are seventy-five imprisoned drug users across the units. Their first purchases will also make them debtors to the new dealer, giving Hoffmann a way to bind demand to repayment. He plans to sell more after taking over two wardens in Block F, who regularly bring in large amounts for the Greek prisoner. The strategy thus combines a controlled opening supply with an effort to displace the people who control later access. Hoffmann is not merely selling what has been smuggled in; he is constructing a market whose customers, debts, and future supply routes depend on him.

Isolation and the cost of control

The takeover is not secure simply because the three leading dealers have been removed. When Hoffmann believes exposure may be imminent, the prison offers one possible refuge: voluntary isolation. The riot squad enters Block G in helmets and shields, with sedatives available, and escorts him through the prison to the isolation unit in Block C. Six officers remain behind to discourage renewed violence while four escort the vulnerable prisoner. The move changes his immediate surroundings, but not the underlying danger; isolation is still a controlled prison space, with its own cells, shared areas, and restricted circle of contact.

The later disclosure that one of the four people he regarded as his protection and possible escape had betrayed him sharpens the vulnerability at the center of the operation. Hoffmann has built a new market by making himself visible and by relying on helpers who can operate within the prison’s informal order. The same dependence creates an opening for exposure. His takeover is therefore both a commercial seizure and a precarious performance of authority: the supplies can be hidden, measured, and distributed, but the loyalties that make the system work cannot be secured by arithmetic.