Munich  - Throughout his trial, Helg Sgarbi presented the slick image which he had used to work his way into the hearts and wallets of wealthy female spa guests.

The 44-year-old was on Monday convicted and jailed for six years for extorting millions of euros from Germany's richest woman after seducing the married mother-of-three.

Immaculately dressed in a black suit with a white shirt, the Swiss citizen calmly faced a sea of camera flashes before addressing the court in Munich - and the women he had duped.

"I regret the events deeply and apologize here in this trial and in public to the aggrieved women," Sgarbi told the court, as he pleaded guilty to the charges.

Of these women, it was the media-shy Susanne Klatten, estimated to be Germany's richest woman, who brought Sgarbi to justice after he had tried to blackmail her with videotapes of the pair having sex in a Munich hotel.

In Klatten, a multi-millionairess who sits on the board of BMW and is the major shareholder in chemicals giant Altana, Sgarbi targeted a respectable woman from Germany's social elite who would protect her reputation above anything else.

But when he tried to extort 14 million euros (17.5 million dollars) by threatening to send copies of illicit video recordings of them having sex to her husband and the BMW board, she swallowed her pride and contacted the police.

By this point, Klatten had already given Sgarbi 7 million euros, to help with supposed repayments after a car accident which, he told her, had left a child badly disabled.

It turned out that Sgarbi had spun this yarn before.

The interpreter, who spoke six languages fluently, had systematically wooed wealthy women at luxurious spa resorts, then asked them to help with maintenance costs by giving him six- to seven-figure payments.

Sgarbi's dishonesty, which was defended by his legal team with the comment, "In Switzerland, a simple lie is not fraud," on Monday earned him a six-year prison sentence - one year more than his lawyers had hoped for, but three years less than the prosecution had demanded.

The prosecutors said Sgarbi's confession was little more than a ruse to get a lighter sentence, and were critical of his refusal to give information about what had become of the money, any possible accomplices, and the whereabouts of the incriminating video tapes.

Sgarbi's defence argued that the women had voluntarily parted with the money.

Alongside Klatten, three other women were represented in Monday's trial. Between them had given Sgarbi 9 million euros. One of them had also been blackmailed with compromising videos.

The trial did not discover what has become of the money. It is thought part of it may have gone to the leader of a sect in Italy, against whom a European arrest warrant has now been issued.

Italy, which has the sect leader under house arrest, is refusing to hand the man over to German prosecutors, however. Sgarbi wouldn't give any information on the sect leader, who the prosecutors assume he is trying to protect.

Sgarbi's wife, with whom he has a 3-year-old child, is purportedly also a member of the sect. (dpa)