Munich - An alleged gigolo who seduced Germany's richest woman, Susanne Klatten, 46, has been indicted for professional fraud, a court in Munich said Thursday.

Helg Sgarbi, 43, has been in pre-trial custody since January after Klatten, a brunette billionairess with a husband and three children, called police to say the Swiss man was trying to blackmail her with intimate videos.

News reports suggest Sgarbi, a former bank executive, was doing the will of an Italian religious guru, Ernano Barretta, 63, who is in custody in Italy on related charges.

Klatten is a major shareholder in German carmaker BMW and sits on its board after inheriting stock from her late father Herbert Quandt.

Sgarbi, who reportedly obtained 7 million euros (9 million dollars) from her with a false story that he was being hounded by the Mafia, will also face charges of attempted professional fraud and attempted professional extortion.

Prosecutors charge his crimes were professional, and thus more serious, because he preyed on a series of rich women, seducing them and demanding money by lies or by blackmail using secretly filmed intimate videos.

The indictment includes the legal definition of "professional," that the income gained this way was "not just occasional."

The state superior court said the indictment was issued December 3 but not published until it had been served on Sgarbi in jail. He was extradited from Austria to Germany in March.

Prosecutors charge that Sgarbi used a standard made-up story with all his victims, claiming that he had been in a traffic accident where he had seriously injured a child and now faced enormous damages claims, blackmail or threats.

He allegedly told each of the rich, soft-hearted women that he urgently needed millions to save himself.

The next legal step is for Munich judges to decide whether to accept the indictment and set a trial date.

News reports said Sgarbi hung around the bar of a luxury hotel in Austria, trying to charm rich women, and did not initially realize he had landed Germany's richest.

The inquiry became public last month. Her spokesman Joerg Appelhans said then that the blackmail "with pictures of their encounters" began in autumn 2007.

Businesswoman Klatten, who all her life has avoided celebrity and the gossip press, has only given one interview about her ordeal, with a business newspaper.

She has been praised in the German media for ruthlessly turning in Sgarbi at the price of her own embarrassment. (dpa)