A smooth-talking con man known as the 'Swiss Gigolo' has been jailed for six years for cheating and blackmailing a string of super-rich lovers, including Germany's wealthiest woman.
Helg Sgarbi, aged 44, admitted ‘the essence’ of the charges against him, which included trying to hoodwink BMW heiress Susanne Klatten out of more than €340m.
‘I would like to apologise publicly to my victims,’ the dark-haired, inconspicuous-looking Sgarbi told the court as his trial opened in Munich, southern Germany.
He is accused of trying to defraud Ms Klatten with sob stories, promises of a new life together and finally threats to release compromising video footage of their affair.
Prosecutors had called for a jail term of nine years, saying his confession might be counted in his favour since it would mean that Mrs Klatten and the other women would be spared the embarrassing ordeal of having to testify.
‘It was pretty clear before the trial that none of the women wanted to come here,’ Judge Gilbert Wolf said as he announced the verdict.
Defence lawyer Egon Geis, who in the past has taken on several high-profile cases, including that of Hitler ‘diaries’ forger Konrad Kujau in the 1980s, had called for five years.
Susanne Klatten, 46, is a major shareholder in German luxury carmaker BMW, inherited from her industrialist father Herbert Quandt who saved the Bavarian firm from collapse in 1957 and built it up to a global champion.
Sgarbi, who told his conquests he was a ‘special Swiss government representative in crisis zones’, first met her while hunting for rich, lonely women at the exclusive Austrian health resort of Lanserhof in July 2007.
At first the married mother-of-three spurned Sgarbi's advances but they began an affair when he turned up unexpectedly in the south of France where she was on holiday the following month.
Later in August 2007 they met in the Holiday Inn hotel in Munich for an intimate encounter that Sgarbi secretly filmed.
In September they met at the same hotel and this time Sgarbi allegedly said that he needed €10m because he had injured a small girl in a car crash in Florida - asking Klatten to lend him €7m.
Mrs Klatten handed over the sum in the Holiday Inn's underground garage in a cardboard box containing 14 plastic folders each with a thousand 500-euro banknotes.
However, when the gigolo told her to leave her husband and put €290m in a trust fund to finance their new life, Mrs Klatten baulked and ended the relationship.
Then, according to prosecutors, Sgarbi threatened to send compromising video footage of their hotel encounters to the press, to the board of BMW and to her husband.
This time he allegedly demanded €49m, which he then reduced to €14m, and set a deadline of 15 January last year.
However, she had already informed the police, and Sgarbi was arrested.
