"Goodbye Germany" Ex-marriage fraudster gets engaged to TV emigrant - family sounds the alarm
Mismatched couple: Heidi and Mike.
Image: Vox
Surprise proposal in the boxing ring: Mike wants to marry Heidi.
Image: Vox
Heidi's sister Nancy is skeptical about love.
Image: Vox
Mismatched couple: Heidi and Mike.
Image: Vox
Surprise proposal in the boxing ring: Mike wants to marry Heidi.
Image: Vox
Heidi's sister Nancy is skeptical about love.
Image: Vox
After 20 years in prison, ex-cheat Mike Wappler wants to start a new life with "Goodbye Deutschland" emigrant Heidi Hesso - but her sister fears for her heart and fortune.
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- Ex-marriage swindler Mike Peter Wappler, known as "Billionaire Mike", is planning to marry wealthy emigrant Heidi Hesso after 20 years in prison.
- Her sister Nancy expresses doubts about his intentions in the TV format "Goodbye Deutschland", as Wappler has a criminal past involving fraud and forgery.
- Wappler claims to be a reformed "retired bandit" who now lives as an artist and does not need Heidi's fortune.
He called himself a "freelance artist" when the team from the VOX docusoap "Goodbye Deutschland" visited the former marriage swindler and fraudster Mike Peter Wappler (68) on Mallorca.
The ex-convict, who became known as "Billionaire Mike", now spends most of his time here in Cala Ratjada, at the home of his girlfriend Heidi Hesso (40).
He had been in a relationship with her for a year - even though she thought they had already been married for 25 years, as the mother of a six-year-old daughter confessed. Little Cecilia had also already taken Mike to her heart and called him daddy.
On the Reeperbahn in Hamburg at 18
Family idyll or deceptive happiness? It was no coincidence that Heidi's youngest sister Nancy Dechmann (37) expressed concerns later on in the show.
After all, her future brother-in-law had a long criminal record, having served around 20 years behind bars for forgery, receiving stolen goods and bribery as well as possession of counterfeit money and weapons. One of the ways he had scammed money was by "selling" villas to wealthy people that he didn't even own. The money "didn't hurt them anyway", as he emphasized.
After landing on Hamburg's Reeperbahn at the age of 18 and making a name for himself there early on, he also enjoyed spending time in Cannes and Monte Carlo in the 1970s and 80s. There he deliberately sought to get close to wealthy women and made sure that they fell in love with him so that he could then rob them of part of their fortune.
"Maybe he just wants to rip them off"
He didn't seem to feel sorry for them because they were "not normal women". It didn't seem to occur to him that even millionaires have feelings and that the financial loss was perhaps not the worst thing he had done to them.
How was Nancy supposed to believe that he was serious about her sister? Together with her older sister Selma, Heidi and Nancy ran a successful finca rental business and, according to Heidi herself, were "wealthy". "Maybe he just wants to rip them off," Nancy feared.
He didn't want to, Mike assured her. He was a "retired bandit" and loved Heidi. He now earned his money "very successfully" with books, films and his painting. People paid several thousand euros for his abstract acrylic paintings, for example, which he created with his fingers and which he only seemed to be convinced of because they brought in so much money. In any case, he emphasized that he did not need his loved one's fortune.
The love story began in prison
In his life, he had "met over 1000 women, maybe even more, but none of them were like Heidi. Heidi is something very special." He met the 28-year-old entrepreneur while he was still in prison and she wrote him a letter in response to a Facebook appeal.
Their first date was on a night out - and they had been together ever since. Even though she "didn't really like" his past, Heidi realized early on that there was "another Mike behind the billionaire Mike".
His story can also be explained by his childhood: by his own account, he was a Sinti who had experienced a lot of discrimination in the past. In any case, Heidi thought she knew the "other Mike" so well that she accepted his marriage proposal in the boxing ring during a stay in Hamburg.
At the end of the show, Nancy was still not convinced that this was a good idea. Nevertheless, she stood behind her sister: "If that's the way she wants to go, then I'll go with her." And who knows - maybe the "retired bandit" will actually manage to surprise his future sister-in-law in a positive way ...
