Gina Lollobrigida left half her estate to an assistant who was convicted of exploiting her, and her son says €10 million is gone

Gina Lollobrigida met Andrea Piazzolla when he was 21 and working as a delivery boy at her villa on the Appia Antica in Rome. He became her assistant and manager and moved into the villa. On 5 January 2017 she wrote a will leaving half her estate to her son, Andrea Milko Skofic, and half to Piazzolla. Her own drawings, photographs and sculptures went to Piazzolla and the businessman Horacio Pagani, on condition they never be sold; Etruscan vases went to the state. On 10 March 2017 Skofic and his son Dimitri reported Piazzolla to prosecutors. On 1 October 2021 Italy's Court of Cassation confirmed that she needed a court-appointed administrator for her assets; it found her not mentally infirm but vulnerable. She died on 16 January 2023, aged 95. Piazzolla said he would put whatever he inherited into a trust for her art. On 13 November 2023 a Rome judge convicted him of exploiting an incapable person by taking her assets between 2013 and 2018 and sentenced him to three years; prosecutors had asked for seven and a half. Skofic says Piazzolla spent €10 million of her money. Javier Rigau, a Spanish businessman who married her by proxy in 2011, still claims to be her widower; the Church annulled that marriage in 2019. In March 2026 Skofic said the villa was empty and its furniture had been sold to pay creditors. The outcome of any appeal of the 2023 verdict is not confirmed^†.