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The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi
#1

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Great read about about an average beta looking man seducing married women from powerful European families and getting money from them. Eventually he attempts to blackmail the heiress of BMW. Game recognized. The story reads like a novel.

http://www.details.com/culture-trends/ne...rentPage=1

Quote:Quote:

Seducing, swindling, and blackmailing European matrons, Helg Sgarbi perfected a scam that made him a fortune. Then one day he met the billionaire BMW heiress

The gigolo is not an attractive man. Thin-lipped and angular, Helg Sgarbi appears more bookish than rakish, and his blue eyes seem to telegraph a constant message: vulnerability and need. When I enter the visiting room at Munich's Stadelheim prison, he is slouched behind a long wooden table, sandwiched between two other inmates. A little girl plays on the floor while two brothers argue in low tones. Dressed in blue prison jeans and a collared jersey, arms folded high, Sgarbi looks bored, accustomed as he is to the salons of Monte Carlo, the spa resorts of Austria, and the company of sad, doting rich women.

When he sees me approach, followed by a translator, he appears startled. Sgarbi is expecting his lawyer, not a complete stranger. Perhaps I am a hit man, sent by a cuckolded husband. A former Credit Suisse banker, the 44-year-old Sgarbi used to make his living preying on lonely women of means, seducing them, videotaping them having sex with him, and blackmailing them. That is, until the summer of 2007, when he took on three for-profit affairs simultaneously, including the one with his prize catch—Susanne Klatten, the married heiress to the BMW fortune and the richest woman in Germany, worth $12 billion—who became his downfall. Tabloids called him the "Swiss Gigolo," and he ranks as the most notorious con-man Lothario in the world today, a grifter accused of swindling a half-dozen women (though one eventually dropped the charges) out of more than $38 million in the course of his career.

I assure Sgarbi I am not here to hurt him, that I have met with his lawyer. He cuts me off: "You spoke to my lawyer about my case?" he says in English. "I did not give permission." In fact, Sgarbi's attorney offered to broker an interview—for a few hundred euros—and is looking to cut a deal for the film rights to Sgarbi's life story. You can see Sgarbi struggling to keep up with who is selling what to whom. "I am sorry you have come all this way," he says, sounding quite genteel, as he stands. "But there is nothing that I can tell you."

There is plenty Sgarbi could say but hasn't. In March, he averted what would surely have been a long and sensational trial by delivering a bombshell five-line confession on his first day in court. It conveniently saved him and the powerful Klatten, or "Lady BMW," as the press calls her, from having to air in public the lurid details of their affair—which included a videotaped sex romp at a Holiday Inn. Although prosecutors asked that Sgarbi serve nine years in prison for fraud and blackmail, the judges sentenced him to only six after he confessed. Sgarbi, who is fluent in six languages, got to keep his mouth shut—and his ill-gotten millions hidden.

But now comes a noisy sideshow that could threaten Sgarbi's fortune. This month, Italian prosecutors will put Sgarbi's alleged puppet-master, a 64-year-old former mechanic, on trial for "criminal association." Police say Ernano Barretta, an Italian religious-sect leader who claims to be a faith healer and allegedly has used female followers for sex, controlled Sgarbi, helping him target women, videotape them, and spend their money—conveniently enough, by buying resort properties in Egypt and splurging on Ferraris and Lamborghinis. What Barretta couldn't spend, Italian prosecutors say, he buried on his estate, near a 13th-century village close to the Adriatic coast.



When police raided the compound after Sgarbi's arrest in early 2008, they found €1.5 million in cash stuffed in vases, a suit of armor, and moldy tin cans buried in the yard. Among seven people arrested that day were Barretta's wife, his adult son and daughter, several waitresses from a wedding hall Barretta runs, and Sgarbi's wife, Franziska, who lives in the village with their 3-year-old daughter.

With his wife and friends charged as co-conspirators, Sgarbi receives no visitors. Out of loneliness or curiosity, or perhaps just to practice his gamesmanship, he finally invites me to sit, but he remains suspicious. "There are two stories," Sgarbi says, "the lies they tell about me and my family and the person who I am. I feel very sorry for me and my friends involved in this case." The legendary ladies' man, who bragged he could "read women like a map" and noted that in the female "everything is signposted," is absorbed in self-pity.

Soon, though, he is peppering me with personal queries (how long have I been a journalist? How was my flight? Do I read the Economist?). He shows interest in my responses, what appears to be genuine empathy—a trait that must have helped him gain victims' trust. "He seemed," one woman told investigators, "very unthreatening."

Helg Sgarbi was born Helg Russak in Zurich, the son of the deputy director of a machine and diesel-engine factory in the Swiss industrial center of Winterthur. He spent several years of his childhood in Brazil, after his father got work there as an engineer. At 22, he joined the Swiss Army. He later attended law school in Zurich, graduating in 1992 and going to work at Credit Suisse. These are facts Sgarbi is willing to discuss. Other details are murkier.

Sgarbi liked to gain sympathy from women by spinning his middle-class upbringing into a hard-luck story of lost wealth—he had a falling-out with his father over an inheritance, he would tell them, and had raised himself since he was a teen. He would also claim he had the ears of prominent businessmen like Josef Ackermann, the head of Deutsche Bank. There were elements of truth in his tales. Ackermann had served as president of Credit Suisse's executive board during the four years that Sgarbi worked at the bank, in mergers and acquisitions. "Afterwards," admits Sgarbi's lawyer, Egon Geis, "his life is not so well-known." Sgarbi tells me, with great enthusiasm, that after leaving Credit Suisse he became a corporate consultant, "taking tech companies public." But he refuses to name any of them. He also boasts of having opened a translation company with 300 employees worldwide, called Technology Business Development. "It no longer exists," he says.

We're now sitting across from each other. After 30 minutes, he is more relaxed—and voluble. "I always try to find a niche," he tells me, "some new element to exploit."

valhalla
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#2

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Amazing story. He sounds like a horny Victor Lustig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig

"Imagine" by HCE | Hitler reacts to Battle of Montreal | An alternative use for squid that has never crossed your mind before
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#3

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Quote: (08-14-2014 04:51 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Amazing story. He sounds like a horny Victor Lustig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig

Lustig was all I could think of too as i read that.

There's something magical about these old school conman types.
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#4

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Quote: (08-14-2014 06:05 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  

Quote: (08-14-2014 04:51 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Amazing story. He sounds like a horny Victor Lustig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig

Lustig was all I could think of too as i read that.

There's something magical about these old school conman types.

Indeed. I wouldn't mind studying a video interview of Helg Sgarbi to glean some insight into it. Unfortunately I can't find anything.
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#5

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Quote:Quote:

As he speaks, he looks over at Cristine, the thirty-something German translator I've brought to facilitate dealings with the prison guards. Sgarbi starts to ask her mundane personal questions: She worked in Paris? At Microsoft—in what department? What languages does she speak? Where in Germany did she grow up? Oh, her elderly mother is ailing. That's sad. Has she considered such and such treatment?

It's striking to see how he works, how all con artists work—digging for information and for intimacy, creating a connection, genuine on one end and dead on the other.

Elderly game recognized.
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#6

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

He got caught, therefore he lost. He may as well lived a beta life of mediocrity rather then taking chances because that is a better place then where he ended up.
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#7

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

'Catch Me If You Can' was the best conman book I've ever read. A lot more detail than the movie - Frank Abagnale actually came away with millions & minimal punishment.
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#8

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Quote: (08-14-2014 08:16 AM)Heathree Wrote:  

He got caught, therefore he lost. He may as well lived a beta life of mediocrity rather then taking chances because that is a better place then where he ended up.

6 years in jail and he gets to "keep the location of his millions secret". He scored $10 million in one score just from his last victim. Not saying I'd make this bargain myself but let's say he's got $10 million stashed away, that a little over $32,000 a week to stay in prison.
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#9

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Good stuff on Lustig. This from Wikipedia:

Quote:Quote:

A set of instructions known as the "Ten Commandments for Con Men"[8] has been attributed to Lustig:

Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups).
Never look bored.
Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.
Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.
Hint at sex talk, but don't follow it up unless the other person shows a strong interest.
Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.
Never pry into a person's personal circumstances (they'll tell you all eventually).
Never boast - just let your importance be quietly obvious.
Never be untidy.
Never get drunk.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
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#10

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Quote: (08-14-2014 08:52 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

Quote: (08-14-2014 08:16 AM)Heathree Wrote:  

He got caught, therefore he lost. He may as well lived a beta life of mediocrity rather then taking chances because that is a better place then where he ended up.

6 years in jail and he gets to "keep the location of his millions secret". He scored $10 million in one score just from his last victim. Not saying I'd make this bargain myself but let's say he's got $10 million stashed away, that a little over $32,000 a week to stay in prison.

When he gets out, are they going to let live a peaceful, happy, easy going life? The people who he got involved with are monied, are they going to let him have it easy? And the authorities will want to know where the unrecovered money has got to. So blowing 20k on a shopping trip is probably not an option.
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#11

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

[Image: gamerecognized.gif]

So what is his username on this forum?

"Money over bitches, nigga stick to the script." - Jay-Z
They gonna love me for my ambition.
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#12

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Heligmanifesto
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#13

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Quote: (08-14-2014 08:56 AM)heavy Wrote:  

Good stuff on Lustig. This from Wikipedia:

Quote:Quote:

A set of instructions known as the "Ten Commandments for Con Men"[8] has been attributed to Lustig:

Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups).
Never look bored.
Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.
Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.
Hint at sex talk, but don't follow it up unless the other person shows a strong interest.
Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.
Never pry into a person's personal circumstances (they'll tell you all eventually).
Never boast - just let your importance be quietly obvious.
Never be untidy.
Never get drunk.

Pretty good sales and game advice as well. I wonder how long until Tucker Max rips it off and claims it is original.
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#14

The World's Greatest Con Man: Helg Sgarbi

Lustig has been a hero of mine since childhood just from his sheer balls. The man conned Al Capone out of 1,000$ just to say that he'd done it.

"Later, Lustig persuaded Al Capone to invest $50,000 in a stock deal. Lustig kept Capone's money in a safe deposit box for two months then returned it to him, claiming that the deal had fallen through. Impressed with Lustig's integrity, Capone gave him $1,000. It was, of course, all that Lustig was after.[4]"
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