Oh sure, I remember the original one!

What is it about hookers, strippers and the name “Ashley” anyway? Same with Autumn and Amber. Something about “A” names (the Scarlet Letter)?

I remember the Mayflower Madam story….what is it with that hotel? Always in the news for sex, lies, deception for the political elite. I don’t have much sympathy for Spitzer but I do feel for his wife and 3 teenage daughters.

The “Mayflower Madam” was Sydney Biddle Barrows who operated out of New York City with a her customers very “high end”. Many were diplomats and staff from the UN. The Mayflower tag was used by the press because Barrows was a member of a social organization composed of descendants of Pilgrams who arrived to the continent via the Mayflower.

[Thanks for the link!]

I read the book.

I hadn’t heard much detail as to why the Feds give a flying fart about this, so I’m really mostly just curious about that. I’ve also heard a rumor that the media photos of ‘Kristen’ and claims about her MySpace page may be incorrect, but I’m still waiting to see on that one, too. In the meantime, I’ve added her to my friends list ’cause that’s what MySpace is all about: someone gets busted for prostitution and you immediately want to be friends with them.

@goinglikesixty: The legal justification has been suspicious money transfers (banks are required to report transactions greater than X dollars). The Feds say they thought perhaps he was being blackmailed or extorted. Wiretaps then revealed it was actually money for escorts.

To the best of my knowledge there are no Federal laws directly addressing prostitution. However, there are laws (the Mann Act) about transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. I believe one could make a case for prosecution under this statute.

The other issue is the money transfers. Spitzer broke up his transfers into smaller sums to avoid triggering the automatic reporting to the Feds. If your intent is to avoid the reporting by breaking up the transfer this is called “structuring” and is illegal. He also asked the bank to keep his name off the transfers. This raised even more suspicions at the bank. The end results was the bank did report him to the Feds and the rest is history in the making.

I will grant you that consensual prostitution is a victim-less crime and shouldn’t be against the law. I will grant that transferring $10K or even $100K blocks of money around is no business of the Feds and they should not have the authority to snoop around in anyones financial records without a search warrant. But as someone in a position of power and trust he put himself in a position of being vulnerable to blackmail because what he did is against the law (and even if it was all legal he probably was vulnerable to blackmail with the threat of telling his wife). That shows exceedingly poor judgment and puts into question his fitness as a public servant. And at the very least it was required, for the good of the people of New York state, that all this be make public to eliminate the blackmail risk.

Bottom line: No conspiracy is required to justify the Feds actions.