BERLIN — Celebrity sex tape scandals have been all the rage for several years now – but most of them had at least one thing in common: they concerned sex tapes that had actually been made at some point in time. That apparently came as news to three German men who thought they’d cooked up the perfect get-rich-quick scheme.The pathetic trio chose Susanne Klatten, Germany’s most wealthy woman, as the target of their seemingly foolproof plot. Their unspeakably clever story focused on a real or imagined forbidden tryst that Klatten allegedly had with a Swiss gigolo who loved his image enough capture it on tape while plying his trade.

According to Munich prosecutors, having dreamed up the ideal way to line their nests with Klatten’s money, the three proceeded to attempt to extort 800,000 euros ($1,136,388) and a luxury BMW SUV from the woman, who just happens to be the heiress to the BMW fortune.

As Munich state prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch explained to Reuters, “They sent a letter to her threatening to give the sex video they claimed to have to Italian media if she did not give them 800,000 euros and a BMW.

So impressed was Klatten that she promptly passed the note along to the local authorities.

“We assume the story about the video was contrived,” Steinkraus-Koch stated. “At least, we have found no evidence of any such video after searching their apartments and computers. There is nothing to suggest they ever were in possession of such a sex video.”

The apartments and computers were able to be searched after the triumvirate of greed, aged 33 to 46, was apprehended in Duisburg last week.

In order to nap the combo, which consisted of two Germans and an ambitious Serb, an officer pretended to be a friend of Klatten’s who was able to procure a contact telephone number, thus neatly resulting in their arrest.

Likely inspiring the three was Klatten’s confession last year of a Swiss lover who shot x-rated footage of their time together – without her knowledge – and then promised to make the proof of their love pudding go away for tens of millions of euros. After being effectively defanged by her public acknowledgement of the footage, Helg Sgarbi, a one-time Swiss investment banker was sentenced to six cozy years in prison.

Sgarbi admitted during his trial that he had seduced not merely Klatten, but three other women of substantial financial means. Unlike Klatten, the Swiss blackmailer was able to walk away with nearly 10 million euros ($14,206,360).

This is not to say that the sly Swiss swain was unable to squeeze cash from his wealthy married MILF lover. When she became convinced that he had left a child paralyzed in an American traffic accident, she had given him 7 million euros ($9,944,286) in a cardboard box. When he made demands for more money, the mother of three saw the light and showed him the door, resulting in threats to send photos and tapes of their hot hotel sessions to her family, colleagues and the media unless another sizable chunk of change came his way.

His luck was as good as the three men now standing trial.

Likewise, a Bochum truck driver who thought in March that attempting to blackmail Klatten for 75,000 euros ($106,514) was a good idea.

Forbes estimates that Klatten is the 68th most wealthy person in the world, with an inherited fortune that includes her paternal family’s dedicated service to the Nazi party, courtesy of military and railway worker uniforms. Her grandfather’s first wife eventually married Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.