Gunnar Dahlberg, who lived as homeless, saw his sons suddenly receive a letter at home demanding payment for the 'estate of Gunnar'. Relatives also received a letter addressed to the estate of Gunnar. The bureaucratic errors stemmed from Dahlberg not managing to respond to letters sent to an address where he did not live, which led the Swedish Tax Agency to register him as missing.
A case manager at the Traffic Insurance Association then made a mistake and interpreted information about Gunnar Dahlberg as indicating he was deceased. It became a several-month-long process with paperwork and trips to and from the Swedish Tax Agency before Gunnar Dahlberg finally managed to sort everything out. The Traffic Insurance Association has changed its routines to prevent such mistakes from happening again.
The whole thing hit me hard and I almost had a relapse.
Today, Gunnar Dahlberg has his own home and helps out at the association. The specific amount of money demanded in the letter remains unknown, and it is unclear how many other individuals may have been affected by similar mistakes in the past.
They were really shocked.