The Gigolo, the Heiress and the 'seven Up' Blackmail Plot

Swiss businessman Helg Sgarbi, an alleged gigolo, grabbed headlines around the world in 2009 when he was sentenced for trying to exhort millions of Euros from former lover Susanne Klatten, the wealthiest woman in Germany and part-owner of BMW. After they began their affair in 2006, Sgarbi claimed that he needed money to pay off a US Mafia don.

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Sex, blackmail, the mafia, revenge and Nazism - this incredible real-life story has it all. Swiss businessman Helg Sgarbi, an alleged gigolo, grabbed headlines around the world in 2009 when he was sentenced for trying to exhort millions of Euros from former lover Susanne Klatten, the wealthiest woman in Germany and part-owner of BMW. After they began their affair in 2006, Sgarbi claimed that he needed money to pay off a US Mafia don, whose daughter he had allegedly run over in the summer of 2005. Klatten supposedly handed Sgarbi 7 million Euros in a series of plastic folders, using the code phrase 'Seven Up' to prevent Klatten's husband from becoming suspicious. When Klatten ended the relationship, Sgarbi demanded more money from her, threatening to make intimate footage of the two of them available to the press. This is not only an account of blackmail, however, but also of revenge; Sgarbi's father was a Polish Jew forced through slave labour to produce munitions for BMW, the company founded by Klatten's grandfather.
The plot thickens further with a string of other society women who were similarly blackmailed, an Italian mastermind alleged to be behind the plot, a cult and the mystery of where the money is currently hidden. A truly fascinating, complicated and intriguing tale, this book tells the story behind the story.