How much was Spitzer spending? The bank said Spitzer wanted to transfer more “than $10,000 cash”, but then requested it be broken down into smaller transactions to try to avoid the transactions automatically being reported.
Then, incredibly
After the governor transferred $10,000 by breaking it into smaller amounts, he then called the bank asking that his name be removed from the transactions, sources said.
This is unfathomably stupid. Also, it appears that he moved $40,000 through such accounts in possible violation of money laundering laws.
Then there’s this
The girl they sent to him claimed to have special skills at dealing with his allegedly dangerous requests.
The booker responds that he, in an apparent reference to Client 9, sometimes asks the women “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe“
I don’t care what Spitzer does in bed. My point is, this clearly seems quite a lot like the behavior of drug addicts. Utterly reckless behavior. All that matters is the next fix. No concept of consequences. He was a D.A. He knew that multiple sub $10,000 cash transactions are automatically reported to the Feds. So did I, for that matter. My wife, a CPA, knew exactly how they got him when I read the headline, it was a federally mandated Suspicious Activity Report. This is not rocket science nor is it a secret. Especially not to a D.A. who has used such reports to prosecute others.
I’m sticking with my “revenge is a dish best served cold” theory. And I’ll bet the first hit was free. Then he got hooked big time.
PS Spitzer is expected to resign today 11:30am EST, according to Bloomberg TV.
There are several stupid things he did here. How dumb do you have to be to work on breaking prostitution rings for years, then a scant 5 or 6 years later turn around and make the same dumb mistakes you used to nail others? Addiction? I’m thinking yes.
Why wire transfer money? Get cash. You can’t trace cash nearly as easily as you can other forms of transfer. The first rule of doing something illegal is *always use cash*. Not that you can’t trace it, but it makes it a heck of a lot harder than other forms.
As for the rest, the “dangerous request” has been reported several places now to have later be clarified as “having unsafe sex” (ie no condoms). This is risky given that he also went for women under 20, especially given the current report that over 25% of US women tested from age 14 to 19 have some form of STD (normally HPV). If I were his wife my first trip would be to the doctors to get tested, then to the lawyers while waiting for the results.
Heidi Fleiss thinks she knows what the “unsafe sex” was.
http://dealbreaker.com/2008/03/fleiss_advice_avoiding_an_elio.php
Another report said Spitzer may have been seeing prostitutes for ten years. (I forget where I saw it)