Chloe Ayling Kidnapping Was Fabricated To Make Model Famous, Accused Claims

The man accused of kidnapping aspiring British model Chloe Ayling has said the kidnapping was "fabricated" and was a "publicity stunt."

Lukasz Herba, 30, set to face a court in Italy on Wednesday claimed the 20-year-old model was part of the plan and knew she would be held hostage for six days in a remote farmhouse in Italy.

“He says the kidnap was a fabrication. They planned it together so she would become famous,” Lukasz's lawyer Katia Kolakowska told the Mirror U.K., adding that Ayling met Lukasz and his brother Michal Herba in Paris to discuss the plan.

Kolakowska also said there is evidence that Ayling and Herba "had an existing relationship.”

Ayling claimed she was kidnapped July 11 in Milan, Italy, by an operative of the group “Black Death,” which notoriously claims to buy and sell abducted women through auctions on the mysterious dark web where human trafficking is rampant.

According to the model, the kidnappers held her captive in order to auction her off on the dark web. She told police that her abductors kept her handcuffed for two days and planned to auction her off on the dark web.

While recounting her alleged kidnapping which happened when she had gone for a shoot in Milan, Ayling said she was grabbed by the two men, who drugged her with ketamine and told her she was going to be sold as a sex slave.

They placed her in the car boot after stuffing her in a zip-up bag, taping her mouth and cuffing her hands and feet, the model recounted.

"When I walked into the 'studio' there was just silence. Normally someone would greet you at the door, closer to the door, but I just didn't hear anything. So that's why when I saw the door saying 'studio' on it I went to open it, but before I had the time to quickly process my thoughts that is exactly when the masked man put his arm round my neck and my mouth and nose," she said in an interview on "This Morning," adding: "And another one came to the front of me and injected me in my wrist. Two men, two masks. Absolute panic - I didn't know what it was, I didn't know why they were doing it. At this point I still thought someone wrong had got me and the shoot was still supposed to go on. I didn't connect it as a set up."

Investigators raised doubts over Ayling’s account of the kidnapping after it was revealed she had breakfast and went shopping with Herba before her release.

Ayling previously denied any involvement in a kidnaping plan and expressed her heartbreak over doubts cast over her story. She revealed in September that she was writing a book about the alleged kidnap.

“Of course it wasn't a sham. I said six weeks ago that Chloe was genuinely kidnapped and I still stand by that. Herba's lawyer is in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks he is going to successfully defend his client by suggesting it was staged,” her former manager, Phil Green, told Daily Mail.