A debauched and drug-fueled weekend with a transgender escort has landed Fiat heir Lapo Elkann in trouble with police.
Law enforcement officials report that Elkan, who is worth a reported $800million, spent the Thanksgiving holiday in a Manhattan housing project, where he was supplied with a steady stream of cocaine, marijuana and alcohol.
But when it came time for Elkann to settle up for the goods and services he had been provided during his two-day binge, the cash-strapped millionaire attempted to get his hands on $10,000 by allegedly calling up his family rep and claiming he had been kidnapped.
Page Six reports that the family rep immediately called authorities and that Elkann later filed a police report, leading to the arrest of 29-year-old Curtis McKinstry on a charge of grand larceny by extortion.
After investigating the matter further however police dropped the charges against McKinstry, and instead charged Elkann with a misdemeanor for falsely reporting an incident.
The incident comes 11 years after Elkann overdosed on a mixture of heroin and cocaine while in the company of a 53-year-old transsexual prostitute.
Elkann met up with McKinstry on Thanksgiving night after reportedly contacting a number of escort services in the city.
The 39-year-old society fixture, who in 2009 was named to the Best Dressed Hall of Fame by Vanity Fair, headed with McKinstry to her government-subsidized apartment at the Strauss Houses on East 28th Street.
Elkann then proceeded to spend Thursday night, all day Friday and part of Saturday imbibing a mixture of booze, pot and blow according to law enforcement sources.
Then, on Saturday, Elkann allegedly called a representative for his family to inform them that he was being held against his will and needed $10,000 in ransom to be set free by his alleged kidnapper.
That story fell apart less than 24 hours later however according to law enforcement sources, who discovered that Elkann had placed the call to the family rep from his own cell phone.
Police also learned that Elkann had in fact been free to leave the apartment at any time.
He is now set to arraigned in a Manhattan court on January 25 for filing that false report.
The day before he departed for New York City, Elkann posted a video on his Instagram account discussing the business trip he was about to embark on, saying at one point: ‘I’ll be seeing many interesting characters in the creative field and in the entrepreneurial field in the next few days.’
It also appears that he continued to post to his account during his alleged drug binge, with three posts going up between Friday and Saturday, while he was with McKinstry.
One post featured a photo of Steve McQueen from the 1971 racing film Le Mans, which Elkann captioned by writing: ‘Speed is Everything never Stop .’
Elkann – who was born in New York City, spent his youth and teenage years in London and at the age of 17 moved to Turin – secured a job in the family business back in 2003 when he was named Fiat’s Director of Marketing.
He was only in that position for two years however, stepping down after his 2005 overdose in the Turin apartment of transsexual prostitute Donato Broco, who was known as Patrizia in her professional life.
Elkann was just 28 at the time.
He had been the face of Fiat at the time, and news of his overdose and the company he was keeping at the time made headlines worldwide.
Patrizia was just one of three transsexual escorts that Elkann had been partying with that night before falling into a coma, with two other women named Cinzia and Tani also joining the group.
She would later reveal in an interview with Chi that the night of the overdose was the fifth evening she had spent with Elkann, who paid each of the women 1,000 euros according to one report.
Elkann spent two days in a coma, and checked himself in a rehab facility immediately after his release from the hospital.
He later said of the incident in an interview with Vanity Fair: ‘I am very pissed off with myself because I made a huge mistake, but nobody’s perfect.’
