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Gigolo who seduced BMW heiress boasted he read women 'like a map'
Allan Hall in Berlin9 Mar 2009
A Swiss gigolo who made a career out of conning some of Europe's wealthiest women was jailed for six years today for attempting to blackmail a German heiress.
Helg Sgarbi, 44, pleaded guilty to threatening to release secretly recorded videotapes of him having sex with BMW stakeholder Susanne Klatten, 46, unless she paid him millions.
Sgarbi faced 10 years in prison but was still jailed after he never revealed the whereabouts of the ¤9million (£8million) he took from his victims.
He told Munich's regional court he apologised to all the "wronged ladies" he fleeced adding that he "deeply regretted" his actions.
Sgarbi met Ms Klatten, a married mother of three, who according to Forbes Magazine is the 55th richest woman in the world, at an Austrian spa in the summer of 2007.
Posing as a secret agent for the Swiss government he seduced Ms Klatten, from whom he extorted £7million after claiming he had to pay off a Mafia hitman whose daughter he ran over.
Sgarbi, nicknamed "James Bond" by some of his conquests for his good looks and smooth-talking charm, was also accused of conning three other women out of £2.2million.
German police described him as an accomplished predator who "knew all the buttons to press when it came to getting women under his spell."
He used to boast he could "read women like a map: everything is signposted, each turn in the road."
Ms Klatten, who owns a 12.5 per cent stake in BMW and is a descendant of Nazi adviser Gunther Quandt, said in her testimony to police: "He was charming, attentive, and at the same time he seemed very sad. That stirred a feeling in me that we had something in common."
Four weeks after they met, he seduced her in the Holiday Inn in Schwabing, Munich. Next door somebody filmed them making love. Italian police have arrested and accused a 63-year-old Italian named Ernano Barretta of being his accomplice. Barretta denies everything.
By August last year the affair was accelerating. Ms Klatten says Sgarbi told her on his last trip to Miami he crashed his car and killed the daughter of a Mafia hitman. He said the Mafia wanted ¤10million (£9million) or they would "shred" him.
Last 11 September she drove to the Holiday Inn underground car park with ¤7.5million (£6.2 million) in cash.
Sgarbi then demanded ¤49million (£44million) with a CD of stills of them having sex. Ms Klatten would later tell police: "I realised he wasn't the man he claimed to be." It was then Ms Klatten went to the police.
