Three men have been arrested in Germany over a failed attempt to blackmail the country’s richest woman, BMW heiress Susanne Klatten, prosecutors said on Friday.

Klatten went to the police in mid-June immediately after her office in Munich received the first letter from the would-be blackmailers, said Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, a spokesman for prosecutors in the city.

They demanded euro 800,000 ($1.1 million) and a BMW X5 sport utility vehicle to stop them from selling to the Italian press secretly recorded videotapes of her trysts with a ‘Swiss Gigolo’ Helg Sgarbi.

Prosecutors characterised the latest blackmail attempt as a copycat crime. Steinkraus-Koch said there was no indication that the suspects — two of whom have previous fraud convictions — had any connection to Sgarbi, who was convicted earlier this year of defrauding Klatten. He said they also appeared not to have the videotapes, or even to have viewed them.

The three suspects were nabbed in Duisburg on Wednesday after investigators, posing as people close to the 47-year-old Klatten, set up an appointment to hand over the money. The suspects, who came from Duisburg, were between 33 and 46 years old, but prosecutors did not give further details.