Helg Sgarbi has just been jailed for blackmailing Germany's richest heiress after they had an affair. Celine Naughton reports.

On the face of it, Susanne Klatten seemed to have it all -- a handsome husband, three beautiful children and a fortune estimated at between €9bn and €10bn. Yet the 47-year-old heir of BMW and German's richest woman risked everything when she began an affair with a gigolo who defrauded her of millions of euro and tried to blackmail her out of millions more by revealing details of their sexual encounters.

And yet, in an astonishing courtroom drama that's right out of a romantic novel, Helg Sgarbi spared the blushes of his former lover and three other victims by pleading guilty in a German court to defrauding them of €9.4m -- €7m of which came from Klatten. It meant they didn't have to face the public humiliation of giving the torrid details of their evidence in court.

A con artist with a heart -- he even said he was sorry before being sentenced to six years in jail.

Helg Sgarbi (41) cuts an unremarkable figure. Thin, bespectacled, square-jawed and impeccably dressed, he's certainly no Heathcliff. Yet he used to boast to colleagues that he could read women like a map. It was a talent he used to target and seduce some of the world's wealthiest women before relieving them of their assets.

"Men like this are like the Mel Gibson character in the movie, What Women Want," says Dublin-based clinical psychologist Ruth Yoder. "They can read a woman's anxieties and insecurities and respond to them. Sgarbi was skilled in identifying the emotional needs of these women and knew how to respond to them, whether by giving them attention or affection. Once he had them hooked, he could get what he wanted."

What he wanted was money, and he was prepared to do anything to get it.

Klatten and Sgarbi met at the exclusive Lanserhof spa near Innsbruck in the summer of 2007. She was reading Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist. "My favourite book," said Sgarbi as he sat next to her.

He told her of his background, some true, some pure fantasy. He was an officer in the Swiss army reserve, travelled extensively and spoke many languages. The Swiss government, he said, sometimes engaged him in sorting out crises abroad, hostage-taking and other emergencies.

"This would appeal to somebody like Klatten who would be normally protected from danger," says Ruth Yoder. "He presented himself as a man who was daring and dangerous. And the allure was that this intriguing man found her fascinating."

Once they became lovers, he offered an explanation for that inner sadness -- the "ache of guilt" that he said kept him awake at night. He told her he had accidentally killed the daughter of a Mafia boss in a car accident in Miami. The Mafia were out to kill him if he didn't pay blood money of €10m. He could raise €3m, but where would the rest come from?

Klatten fell for the story and on September 11 last year she drove to the Holiday Inn in Munich and handed him €7m -- in cash. It was the way the Mafia wanted it, he said. By October, she had become disillusioned with the relationship, but Sgarbi was having none of it. If she didn't pay him €49m, he threatened to make public videos of them making love.

Realising there would be no end to the extortion, Klatten went to the police and made public knowledge of the affair.

She may feel foolish, but she wouldn't be the first wealthy woman in the world to fall victim to a skilled playboy and con artist. Christina Onassis' fourth husband, Thierry Roussel was a renowned French playboy once described as "the world's most successful gigolo". Christina was said to be so eager to marry him, she paid him $30m as compensation for moving him to Switzerland.

The marriage lasted only three years, during which they had a daughter Athina. He also continued a series of liaisons throughout the union, reportedly four at the same time. Eventually, the couple divorced and shortly afterwards, she died in a bath in Buenos Aires, attributed to a heart attack caused by diet pills.

Yet the roué par excellence was known the world over simply by his nickname -- Rubi. Pop songs were written about him, women he'd never met were said to offer to leave their husbands for him and, in a tribute to his legendary physical endowments, gigantic peppermills brandished in Parisian restaurants in the 1940s became known as "Rubirosas".

Porfirio Rubirosa bedded some of the world's most famous women including Eartha Kitt, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Eva Peron and Veronica Lake, and married two of the richest women on the planet -- Barbara Hutton and Doris Duke. When heiress income was scarce, he resorted to stealing jewels and indulging in illicit scams.

"Work?" he said to one journalist who had dared ask how he occupied his time. "I don't have time to work!"

- Celine Naughton