A scion of Italy’s powerful Agnelli family has been charged with falsifying his own kidnapping as part of an alleged ploy for ransom money, according to police in New York City.

Lapo Elkann, the 39-year-old grandson of Gianni Agnelli, the late billionaire industrial magnate who was chief executive and controlling owner of Fiat, was charged with filing a false report after he allegedly called his family and told them he was being held against his will in a Kips Bay apartment in Manhattan and needed $10,000 to be released.

Elkann, the brother of John Elkann, who serves as chairman of the automaker Fiat Chrysler, allegedly made the false claim about being kidnapped after spending the weekend consuming drugs with an escort.

A representative of the Agnelli family allegedly dropped off the payment to police. Elkann and the escort were later found in front of the escort’s apartment and taken in for questioning, at which point the alleged ploy was discovered.

Elkann’s grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, was considered a prime target for real kidnapping – and worse – by the Italian leftist terrorist group the Red Brigades in the 1970s. Agnelli lived under guard during the height of the so-called Years of Lead in Italy, when more than two dozen Fiat managers were wounded and four were killed by militant groups.

The charge against Elkann was first reported by the New York Daily News. A press officer for the New York police department confirmed that Elkann had been charged with issuing a false report on Sunday and that “all the details in the Daily News are right”.



The escort was also initially charged but the NYPD said those charges were dropped.

It is the second time Elkann, an entrepreneur who founded an eyewear company, Italia Independent, has been linked to drug use. Elkann has spoken publicly of surviving a drug overdose in 2005 that nearly killed him, and how he got clean after attending rehab in Arizona.

In an interview with the Sunday Times last year, he described himself as happier than ever. “Chemicals are no longer part of my life. Today, living with sobriety makes life much easier. It also makes it more interesting, because you live things naturally, not doped. The dumbest thing I did was harming myself.”

Although his holdings in Fiat make him worth billions, Elkann said his mindset in creating his own companies was “think like a self-made man”.