'Gigolo' jailed for blackmailing BMW heiress

The 'Swiss Gigolo' Helg Sgarbi in court after being sentenced to jail for defrauding rich women. Photo / AP

The blackmailer nicknamed the "Swiss Gigolo" was jailed for six years yesterday after he confessed to blackmailing Germany's richest heiress by threatening to distribute videos of their sexual activities together.

Helg Sgarbi, 44, also admitted to making similar extortionate demands of other wealthy women with whom he cultivated relationships.

Dressed in a tie and three-piece suit, he smiled at photographers at his brief trial in Munich as his lawyer announced that he would make a "full confession" about his blackmailing of the women.

With a blank expression, Sgarbi told the court: "I deeply regret my actions and I would like to apologise here in public to the ladies I have harmed." Sgarbi admitted to extorting US$9million (NZ$18.2m) from his victims, including from the married BMW heiress Susanne Klatten.

He was convicted on four counts of fraud and of attempted fraud and attempted blackmail. The prosecution had demanded a jail sentence of nine years but he was sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The presiding judge said he had opted for leniency because Sgarbi's confession had ensured that Mrs Klatten and three of his other victims would be spared the embarrassment of having to appear in court to give evidence.

Lawyers said Sgarbi, who used to pretend to his victims that he was "Switzerland's special envoy for crisis zones", could expect to serve the full six years of his jail term as he had refused to disclose the whereabouts of the cash he had taken from the women and he had said nothing about the compromising sex video he claimed to have of Mrs Klatten.

Significantly, Sgarbi also omitted any mention of his mentor, Ernano Barreta, 63, the shadowy leader of a quasi-religious Italian sect.

Mr Barreta, who is suspected of masterminding the gigolo's blackmailing activities, is in jail in Italy ahead of a trial that is expected to start at the end of March. He claims he is innocent.

Sgarbi met Mrs Klatten, who is reputed to be worth about US$9.5billion and was listed as the 68th richest person in the world last year, at an exclusive Austrian health spa in July 2007.

In a witness statement, she described him as "charming, attentive but at the same time very sad".

"That stirred a feeling in me that we had something in common," she said.

Mrs Klatten initially dismissed Sgarbi's advances but started an affair with him the next month.

In September 2007, he persuaded her to hand him $7million (NZ$14.1m), claiming that he needed the money to pay the family of a little girl whom he had injured in a car accident in Florida.

The BMW heiress, who is married with three children, handed him the sum in a cardboard box in a car park beneath the Holiday Inn in Munich.

Sgarbi then asked Mrs Klatten to leave her husband and give him US$290m so that they could "start a new life together."

When Mrs Klatten refused to do so, Sgarbi threatened to make public a secret video that he claimed to have made of them having sex in a bedroom at the Holiday Inn.

In a letter, he wrote to her: "While your risk is very high, my risks are irrelevant." It was at this point that Mrs Klatten called the police.

Sgarbi's other victims were a wealthy 83-year-old countess who died in 2001 after withdrawing all charges against him, and three women whom he also blackmailed with threats about secret sex videos and conned with trumped-up stories about having to pay for crash victims.

- THE INDEPENDENT