Apparently in Germany, the going rate for love is around $9 million!!! Here’s the story.

Susanne Klatten, a 46-year-old married woman, the richest woman in Germany, was scammed by Helg Sgarbi, a 44-year-old man who has been dubbed “the Swiss gigolo” by the media. Klatten is a major shareholder in several companies including BMW, and her family is very highly regarded in Germany. Sgarbi is one of those men who actually looks good on paper, someone whose profile would pop out at you on match.com. Sgarbi was trained as a lawyer, spoke six languages, worked as a banker at Credit Suisse until the mid-1990s, and also served as a reserve officer in the Swiss army. Unfortunately, he was also a scam artist who carefully targeted women.

In 2007, Sgarbi met Klatten at a spa in Austria. Shortly thereafter, he showed up at her vacation home in the south of France and they began an affair. At some point, he told her that he had been involved in a car accident in the U.S. which left a girl paralyzed. He asked Klatten to give him $9 million to provide treatment for the girl. Although Klatten was initially taken aback by the story, she gave him the money—she met him in a parking garage and handed him a cardboard box filled with cash.

I guess he spotted a good thing, so he then demanded she leave her family and invest $367 million in a trust for him. When she refused, he threatened to release secretly filmed videos of their affair. He then demanded money in exchange for his silence, threatening to go to her family, the head of her corporations, and the media. Instead of paying him off, she went to the police and he was arrested.

This wasn’t the first time he scammed women out of millions of dollars, but Klatten was the only one to voluntarily come forward. I guess his other victims must have been pretty embarrassed, especially the countess who was 50 years older than Sgarbi. Back in 2001, he scammed her out of $17 million. According to my calculations, that means he was 36 and she was 86. Now there’s a video that I have NO desire to watch!!

At least justice was sort of served. Sgarbi was sentenced to six years in prison. He could have received ten years but the judge decided to give him a shorter sentence because Sgarbi’s decision to confess had spared his victims from having to testify in court. What a nice guy after all.