A cache of art, valuables and financial assets worth about $23 million is now at the center of an Italian probe involving the famous Bond girl, Ursula Andress.
Andress’ nearly $23 million fortune was allegedly stolen from her by asset managers. Italian authorities said Thursday the fortune had been recovered after seizing artwork, valuables and other financial holdings.
“Assets fraudulently misappropriated from Ursula Andress have been identified,” Italian authorities shared on social media. “Goods, works of art, and financial holdings totaling approximately €20 million have been seized.”
The stolen funds were traced to the purchase of 11 real estate properties, 14 plots of land cultivated as vineyards and olive groves, along with artworks and financial assets in Florence and the neighboring Tuscan countryside.
A now-90-year-old Andress revealed she had been swindled out of her massive fortune back in January. The money was allegedly stolen over the span of eight years by her longtime financial advisor, who has since died.
“I am still in shock,” Andress told the German outlet Blick. “I was deliberately chosen as a victim. For eight years, I was courted and wooed. They lied to me shamelessly and exploited my goodwill in a perfidious, indeed criminal, way in order to take everything from me. They took advantage of my age.”
Swiss-born Andress is best known as the first Bond girl, Honey Ryder, in 1962’s “Dr. No,” which featured her memorable entrance emerging from the sea in a white bikini.
She went on to work with Elvis Presley in “Fun in Acapulco” and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in “Four for Texas.”
She later transitioned to a European cinema and television career before retiring in the early 2000s.
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Andress’ son, Dimitri Hamlin, previously told Fox News Digital that the iconic role had made an undeniable impact on her successful decades-long career.
“Overall, she feels very lucky,” Hamlin said during a 2022 interview. “Lucky about how she was able to meet and get to know such good people as Sean [Connery], Ian Fleming and [director] Terence Young. And how she is very grateful to have been surrounded by such creative and fun people for so long.”
“She also feels very lucky that the public liked her and that the franchise was a success,” he shared. “And she feels like, for her, Sean was the best Bond.”
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Andress shares son Dimitri with her ex-partner Harry Hamlin. The two met in 1979 after filming “Clash of the Titans.” They shared no scenes, but that didn’t stop them from striking up a romance after meeting at a cast dinner in London.
“Everyone came, and they sat me next to Ursula,” Hamlin told Yahoo Entertainment. “I didn’t know what to say to her exactly, but somehow the subject of flea markets came up, and I said that I’d been to a flea market the week before I flew over to London.”
“When we got to Rome to start filming there, she called me at the hotel one day and said, ‘I’m only five houses down from the hotel, and there’s a flea market tomorrow on the Porta Portese. Do you want to go?’ So that’s how that happened!”
Hamlin and Andress called it quits in 1983.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
