Sylvester S. has been active in the Gooi for many years and is known by several nicknames, including the ‘Schrik van Laren’. Since 2016, he has defrauded several residents using his now well-known chat tricks, and has therefore already performed many community service orders and served prison sentences. NH delved into S.’s turbulent life, using court documents, police reports and stories from the press.
He is now well known to the law, but before that 36-year-old Sylvester Michael S. was already infamous in his then hometown of Laren. A photo of the man hung in nightclubs and cafes to warn people about him. He was said to be ‘seriously confused’ and his neighbors in the Gooiergracht residential area saw him as a ‘ticking time bomb’ who became aggressive out of nowhere.
He caused a nuisance until late at night and anyone who said anything about it could count on an aggressive response. This also applied to alerted officers. In total, the police responded to him 94 times. He was eventually evicted from his rental home in Laren in 2016 and has been staying with his mother in Hilversum ever since.
Wash hands
In October 2016, a report was filed against him when visitors at the Hilversum Pony Club caught him standing behind the cash register with a tea towel in his hand. According to witnesses, he fiddles with the drawer, but when confronted he runs away. He is said to have ‘just washed his hands’.
A little later things went wrong again: a day after Christmas Eve, S. was arrested by the police on suspicion of sneaking into companies and institutions in Hilversum and Laren. He has been accused of theft several times; such as stealing a telephone and a camera from facilities company NEP.
After a lengthy hearing before the police judge in Almere, S. stated that things were going in the right direction now that he had left Laren and that he ‘felt like working’. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) had ‘banked up’ a whole series of criminal offenses in the hope of a firm conviction. However, the judge saw him for the first time and agreed to S.’s plea. He got off with a community service order of 172, although this would be ‘his last chance’.
‘Fright of Hilversum’
Even though S. claimed that things were going in the right direction, a month later, in February 2017, he was again suspected of two thefts. According to prosecutors, he committed one of these at the Alberdink Thijm College on Peter Planciusplein, where he stole a projector. He is also said to have stolen a car, which he managed to open using a hand transmitter.
On February 14, 2017, the police issued an official warning and urged residents to call 911 if it was active again. Later that same year, he was arrested again and the Public Prosecutor requested that the man’s pre-trial detention be extended by sixty days. Due to the repeated scams and thefts that the man has committed, the court allowed this.
Back
He will then go to prison for four months and be released in the fall. Not much later he was arrested in Naarden, where he got into trouble with the police. He disagreed and strongly resisted arrest and even destroyed a police car.
He also returned to facilities company NEP at the Mediapark. After stealing a camera in 2016, he is now guilty of several burglaries. In doing so, he ignores the restraining order imposed on him, which he later violates and which results in yet another arrest in the series. S. indicates in various lawsuits that he is ‘done with the hassle’, but unfortunately we won’t be rid of him for a while.
At the beginning of 2018, he had to appear before the multi-judge chamber of the Central Netherlands District Court, the charges included four completed frauds in Hilversum and the theft of crates of beer in Maartensdijk. He had to sit again, but was released in May. However, this would not be the only prison sentence that year, 5 months later he would receive another month in prison due to one of his chatter tricks.
Snip
In 2019, there finally seemed to be a long-term solution for S’s behavior. Due to four scams in the municipality of Wijdemeren, he was forced to go to an Institution for Systematic Offenders (ISD), a conditional condition would not be sufficient to tackle the risk of recurrence. However, two weeks later the court does not consider it possible to place the suspect in such an institution. This was because it has not been established that the previously imposed sentences on S. have been fully implemented, as this is a condition of imposing ISD.
Instead, he was sentenced to five months in prison, but the risk of recurrence proved to be high as he committed his first offense five days after his release.
Refund
In February 2019, S. will appear before the Utrecht police judge, where he is repeatedly called the ‘Fright of Laren’. However, S. is not satisfied with this nickname, but the Public Prosecutor indicates that ‘he created it himself’. He has to appear because he cheated people in Naarden out of money four times through his well-known chat trick. He made an unsuccessful attempt at one, and as punishment he must repay fifty euros each to two victims.
That year he is active again in several places in the Gooi. For example, on February 12 he was arrested in Nederhorst den Berg on suspicion of fraud in Ankeveen, ‘s Graveland and Nederhorst den Berg. He will stand trial in May and receive the punishment that many have been waiting for for a long time: two years of mandatory admission to an ISD.
Silence before the storm
It is quiet for a moment, S. is stuck for a longer period of time. Perhaps the two years of ISD have made an impression, because for a longer period of time than his admission it remains suspiciously quiet. No chat tricks and no petty thefts, the Gooi finally seems to have gotten rid of the ‘Fright of Laren’. Until a man was arrested at an institution in Bussum on August 15, 2023. A 36-year-old man searched through coats and then threatened an employee with violence and even spat in her face: Sylvester Michael S. is back with a vengeance.
And, as we have come to expect from S., it doesn’t stop there. Stories emerge of a man who went door to door in Bussum in the period from April to May with the age-old chat trick: “my door has blown shut, can I borrow money?”. He also recruited several vulnerable people between September and November. citizens, after which the detectives got stuck in the investigation. The last we know of S. is that he is in custody until the spring.