<title>Prostitute ties cost Spitzer political career

Ashley Alexandra Dupré single realease - "What We Want"

Ashley Alexandra Dupre picture(Spitzer's girl)

Ashley, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches and 105 pounds(165 cm, 47 kg). is also known as the spitzer girl and also goes by the name kristen of Emperor's Club VIP. She has been receiving national attention after her involvement in the Eliot Spitzer controversy and scandal.
She is a 22-year-old aspiring blues singer who comes from a broken home, has abused drugs and is now having problem with her apartment rental at ninth-floor Manhattan apartment. Known as the $US1000-an-hour hooker "Kristen", she is also the prosecution's key witness in the case against four people accused of operating the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.Mr Spitzer paid Ms Dupre a total of $US4300 on February 13. Some of the money was for services rendered that night; the rest was a down payment on future trysts

"This is a man who has made a career prosecuting prostitutes amongst other targets. He is the guy you trust to clean up vice, not to contribute to it."

Andrea Schwartz,the second prostitute to Spitzer case

Andrea Schwartz ,33, the second prostitute to Spitzer case once worked for Emperors Club VIP and provided U.S. authorities with the paper trail that linked Spitzer to the prostitution ring. Investigators gained access to her paychecks from QAT Consulting, a company that owned Emperors, the Post said. Client 9 made payments to QAT. Andrea Schwartz, a Brazilian woman who pleaded guilty to New York state drug and prostitution charges after she was accused of running a brothel that catered to corporate clients.

2006 recap
Andreia Schwarz. The Brazilian bombshell
Using Brothel Earnings to Pay Off Mortgage

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Claiming to be best friend of Kristen video
Now Mr Spitzer's political career is over and the ambitions of the man once dubbed "Mr Clean" and the "Eliot Ness of the 21st century" are limited to avoiding a string of possible felony prosecutions that could put him behind bars and cost him his certificate to practise law.Prima facie, Mr Spitzer is in breach of the Mann Act, which makes transportation of someone across a US state line for the purposes of prostitution a federal crime

Mr Spitzer, identified as "Client 9" in four Emperors Club principals federal affidavit has reportedly spent $US80,000 ($85,000) on Emperors Club prostitutes over the past eight months, was caught on a federal phone tap arranging a meeting with Ms Dupre at a luxury Washington DC hotel on the evening of February 13.

Prosecutors are more likely to consider going after Spitzer, a Democrat, for money laundering(Wire fraud, made false statements about the source or destination of his funds; structuring, made payments to avoid U.S. requirements on reporting cash transactions of more than $10,000; or money laundering, knowledge of other using front companies to move money illegally.) or misusing his office than for prostitution(the Mann Act, which makes it a crime to transport someone across state lines for prostitution) because customers of call girls are rarely pursued by federal authorities, the lawyers and ex-prosecutors said.
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Eliot Spitzer was scheduled to give a major address to close to 1,000 people on Monday, most of whom were women and teens on a reproductive-rights bill in the Empire State Plaza's guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion, among other protections.Those 1,000 citizens who came to lobby found their legislators unavailable, the capital overwhelmed with the Spitzer Sex Scandal news.VIA

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the first New York governor to leave office amid scandal in nearly a century, announced his resignation. Mr. Spitzer becomes the first New York governor to resign since 1973, when Nelson A. Rockefeller stepped down to devote himself to a policy group, and the first to be forced out since William Sulzer was impeached in 1913 over a campaign contribution fraud.

Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson, a state legislator for 22 years and the heir to a Harlem political dynasty, will be sworn in as New York’s 55th governor, making him the state’s first black chief executive on 17th Monday at noon.

Mr. Spitzer, 48, a democrat, had been intercepted on a federal wiretap confirming plans to meet a call girl from a high-priced prostitution service in Washington, leaving the public stunned and angered and bringing business in the State Capitol to a halt. (paying a thousand dollars an hour to a high-end prostitute and meeting her at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC)Ironically, Mr Spitzer seems to have been caught out by changes to banking regulations he helped implement that were aimed at increasing surveillance of suspicious money transfers in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Mr Spitzer came under notice when the North Fork Bank noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts into a shelf company linked to the prostitution ring.

A suspicious-activity report was filed with the Internal Revenue Service and wiretaps begun

Since 10th Monday, Mr. Spitzer has been consumed with crisis, trying to salvage his marriage and his career and avoid federal charges stemming from the case.

Legislative leaders from both parties voiced condolences to Mr. Spitzer’s wife and three daughters.

Many Democrats on the floor of the Assembly seemed almost jovial in the hours after Mr. Spitzer resigned and few in the state’s political establishment came forward to offer support. Some Wall Street traders watched gleefully as his career came to an abrupt end. (He took down the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, Grasso by not using criminal indictment in theory but he almost took on a civil matter.) One New Yorker put it as pretty reprehensible, considering his role in going after the people in Wall Street, his somewhat self-righteous attitude. Mike Higgins, a real estate broker, said: "It's a fitting end – he had a lot of opinions about rights and wrongs, and he clearly was a hypocrite." Even though Spitzer, in recent months, was spearheading a plan to bail out troubled bond insurers, the seeds of revenge run deep, and some have questioned if his high-powered enemies have had a hand in his downfall.

The son of a wealthy real estate investor, Mr. Spitzer was educated at Princeton University and Harvard Law School and worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office before being elected New York’s attorney general in 1998.

Mr. Spitzer Dubbed the Sheriff of Wall Street, was viewed as a guardian against corporate excess.Mr. Spitzer’s admirers once mused that he might one day be the first Jewish president.

As New York's attorney-general he made a name of himselg in cracking down on organised crime, financial excesses and, ironically, prostitution.
Source: The New York Time

Eliot Spitzer's downfall raises a question: Is there a fail-safe way to pay for naughty things? Nathan Vardi 04.07.08

New York's governor was felled not by "Kristen"--but by Osama bin Laden. Since Sept. 11 stronger anti-money laundering rules and new technology have made it tougher to hide dirty transactions of all sorts. As a result, the feds are just as likely to nab a high-profile john as they are a terrorist or drug dealer. "It's very difficult to avoid creating a paper trail," says Gregory Baldwin, a lawyer specializing in money laundering issues in Miami. "If you try too hard, you can trip a wire." In other words, it's easier to cheat on a spouse than to cheat the system. Here are five ways spenders try to cover their tracks.
1. Wires/Transfers.
2. Credit cards.
3. Prepaid cards.
4. Digital currency.
5. Cash. Unless you're unlucky enough to get marked bills, cash is still very hard to trace, says Fred L. Abrams, a New York City asset-recovery lawyer. Client No. 9 (Kristen's benefactor) eventually arrived at that insight, paying $4,300 in bills in his final dealings with the Emperors Club, says the complaint.

Deposits or withdrawals that total more than $10,000 within the same day automatically prompt a currency transaction report to the federal government. Smaller amounts will also be picked up by software monitors if they fit a suspicious pattern. Slicing up transactions to avoid detection--a.k.a. structuring--is illegal. Structuring and money laundering account for half the 600,000 suspicious activity reports banks now file with the feds annually, compared with 162,720 sars at the start of the decade. (In a bizarre case, Riggs Bank, the Wall Street Journal reported, filed sars on former U.S. Senator Bob Dole, after regular withdrawals of up to $8,000 in 2004; no wrongdoing was ever alleged.)

So what's the safe way to get a wad of cash out of the bank? Take it in small and regular doses. Withdrawing $1,200 every week for a high earner is probably not going to trigger an alarm, says Clemente Vazquez-Bello, a lawyer in Miami who advises banks on anti-money-laundering regulations. And if it does, have a good explanation ready. You're within your rights to be a big spender at restaurants and flea markets where credit cards are not accepted.

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