Note to self: When transferring large amounts of money to an illegal business, try not to act in a blatantly suspicious manner.
Spitzer last year had wanted to wire transfer more than $10,000 from his branch to what turned out to be the front for the prostitution ring, QAT Consulting Group, which also uses a number of other names, in New Jersey, the sources said.
But Spitzer had the money broken down into several smaller amounts of under $10,000 each, apparently to avoid getting around federal regulations requiring the reporting of the transfer of $10,000 or more, the sources said. The regulations are aimed at helping spot possible illegal business activities, such as frauds or drug deals.
Apparently, having second thoughts about even sending the total amount in this manner because it still might reveal what he was doing, Spitzer then asked that the bank to take his name off the wires, the sources said.
Bank officials declined, however, saying that it was improper to do so and in any event, it was too late to do so, because the money already had been sent, the sources said.
The bank then, as is required by law, filed an SAR, or Suspicious Activity Report, with the Internal Revenue Service, reporting the transfer of the money that exceeded $10,000, but had been broken down into smaller amounts, the sources said.
...an analyst at the regional IRS office in Hauppauge noted Spitzer's particular SAR and singled it out for attention to criminal investigators, the sources said.
The assumption, the sources said, was that Spitzer was somehow being victimized either by a blackmailer or an impostor. The agents also speculated that perhaps the governor was involved in some sort of political corruption, the sources reiterated.
The agents, located at an IRS office at 1180 Veterans Memorial Hwy. in Hauppauge, then joined with prosecutors in the Southern District in New York to determine the circumstances surrounding the transfer of the money and the nature of the company it was going to.... To the surprise of the prosecutors and the agents, what they uncovered apparently was an international prostitution ring, whose most significant client was likely the governor of New York.
One might call it Shakespearian if there were a shred of nobleness in the story of Eliot Spitzer's fall. There is none. Governor Spitzer, who made his career by specializing in not just the prosecution, but the ruin, of other men, is himself almost certainly ruined.
Mr. Spitzer's brief statement yesterday about a "private matter" surely involves what are widely reported to be his activities with an expensive prostitution ring discovered by the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Those who believe Eliot Spitzer is getting his just deserts may be entitled to that view, but it misses the greater lesson for our politics.
It looks as though Eliot Spitzer, the awful governor of New York, will be resigning after it was revealed today that he has been caught in a federal prostitution sting. Spitzer was the worst kind of abuser-of-power when he was the New York state Attorney General, and his governorship has been marked by allegations of serious corruption and ham-fisted attempts to ram unpopular legislation through the state assembly (for instance, driver's licenses for illegal aliens). I won't be shedding any tears for the (soon to be ex-) governor tonight, and Dean Barnett notes that this episode could have ended better:
Today would be a happier day if Spitzer were driven from public life because the public recoiled at his holier-than-thou prosecutions that were driven much more by a sense of ambition than a desire for justice.
