Posted on 03/15/2008 7:01:00 PM PDT by Brandybux
There are intriguing reports in New York that the man who was once dubbed Eliot Ness – after the “untouchable” FBI crime-buster – may have owed his fall at least in part to the bankers he once pursued with ruthless moral zeal.
Was the governor a victim of Wall Street’s revenge? “Only one thing is certain – it’s an Eliot mess,” declared one former prosecutor.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Unless ...
How 'bout the eager-beavers in banks prosecuted by Spitzer making extra-special observations of money moving from his accounts.
How 'bout these banks being the ones who figured out he was paying for hookers, and then passed this along to the Feds?
Sounds reasonable to me? And, it turns out it sounds reasonable to Alan Dershowitz. My, my.
Bwahahahahaha.
How about he was doing hookers and had he not this would not have happened.
Thats not really true. If he was cashing checks and “structuring” the checks under the $10,000 (IRS reporting level) he would get turned into the IRS
Well, paybacks are a b**ch. Nothing he can do about it.
Spitzer was a super delegate and and nothing happens in New York without orders from Hillary’s mafia. The timing was meant to herd the remaining super delegates into voting for Hillary, else their escort soft spots become public knowledge. Spitzer was the example.
Total Barbra Streisand! Politicians pass these laws requiring banks to report to Big Brother (it’s now since the Patriot Act any transfer over $5,000), and then their enablers in the MSM cry about payback when they get caught!
Eliot just got schooled
The banks are required to report transactions over a certain dollar amount along with any obviously unusal transactions - like trying to get your name off a transaction that you are performing... Shell companies that you pass money through are also a big red flag.
No, Spitz got nailed by the laws he so enjoyed enforcing.
Actually, Spitzer got nailed by thinking he was ABOVE THE LAW he was so eager to inforce.
Well, okay. But how does one know that QAT, Inc, the front company for the Emporer's Club, is in fact a front company?
Is there some list of known front companies that banks have access to, which lets them know that one of their customers is sending money to a front company?
Of course, if Spitzer were transferring money beyond a limit ($10K, $5K, whatever), then there's no need to resort to revenge as an explanation of his undoing. I've not read anything yet to indicate what the amount of money being transferred amounted to.
I suspect they had an insider they want to protect so the 'structuring transfers' charge gave them a pretext.
Kind of a reverse engineering if you will.
Some courts in California will allow a bit of deception on themselves if the motive is to protect an informant.
Oh to be a fly on the wall.
NY Governor Resigns in Disgrace [semi-satire]
New York’s Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) resigned in disgrace after it was discovered that he has been cavorting with high-priced prostitutes for a number of years. As NY’s Attorney General, Spitzer had been an avid prosecutor of prostitution, referring to it as a “stain on the community’s moral well-being,” and its patrons as “low-life scum.”
Spitzer defended his liaisons as the notorious “Client #9,” saying that he had been engaged in “a long-term, under-cover sting operation.” “People have unfairly accused me of lust and fornication,” Spitzer said. “They don’t understand the kind of dirty work that has to be done to fight corruption.”
Nevertheless, Spitzer said he was resigning “in order to take the focus off of me and allow federal agents to devote their time and energy on the real miscreants undermining our nation.”
Privately, Spitzer has been reported as puzzled by the “double standard.” “Bill Clinton gets blown by a teenager and masturbates in a White House sink, yet, the Party rallies to his defense,” Spitzer complained. “Here I am, risking my health probing interstate criminal activity and I’m pushed out. Where’s the justice in that?”
Democratic Party insiders say that Spitzer was mostly the victim of “bad timing.” “Under different circumstances I think he could have brazened it out,” said a source insisting on anonymity. “But with Hillary Clinton locked in a big battle for the nomination, she couldn’t afford this distraction.”
It is said that in gratitude for his quick exit Spitzer will get a cabinet appointment as Attorney General in Hillary Clinton’s Administration—a spot from which he can resume his vendetta against American business.
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
I never handled a single deposit, supervised those who did or even worked with deposit accounts and I was required to know these regulations and to be prepared to file the reports if I did somehow see something that seemed odd.
Blaming it on the banks he targeted is just a way to deflect the blame.
Ding Ding Ding!!!!!!!!!!!
May also break you.
Of course they should have.
First, he wired money in amounts that automatically - by federal law - generate an inquiry. If a bank sees a wire in an amount larger than $10,000 they are required by law to report it, or they could have their charter pulled.
Second, he began wiring money broken down into separate transfers on the same day to the same recipient. This is an automatic money-laundering red flag and any bank employee who handles such a transaction is supposed to either flat-out refuse to do it, or to fill out a suspicious activity report.
Third, once he realized that his actions would likely trigger such a report, he tried to get the bank to change the information on the wire reference - which is illegal. If the first two red flags did not rouse a lazy bank employee to report them, this last request by Spitzer that the employee actively collaborate with him in altering bank records would do it.
All his actions would have triggered any inquiry whether he was Eliot Spitzer or Joe Schmoe.
How 'bout the eager-beavers in banks prosecuted by Spitzer making extra-special observations of money moving from his accounts.
Spitzer didn't actually prosecute any banks. He just threatened to, even though he didn't even have enough evidence to indict them.
In any case, I doubt he banked with the NYSE, or AIG, or Marsh and Maclennan.
Furthermore, if he actually did commercial banking with a major investment bank he antagonized, it would be illegal for someone involved in investment banking to be concerned with the commercial side of the business at that level of detail.
If the bank did that, it might have found absolutely nothing, but exposed it to a real and very serious federal crime.
Conspiracy theories are always fun, but they rarely survive the slightest critical scrutiny.
Eliot Spitzer brought himself down. He didn't need any help.
Bingo.
Not only THAT law, but HE put into effect a STIFFER LAW for JOHNS!!! Karma is a Hillary!
He also asked the Bank to Remove his NAME from one of these transactions!! Talk about RED FLAGS!! What a smart IDIOT!
The article is a typical drive by media hit piece trying to present facts that are just assumptions.
Ofcourse the fact that Spitzer called the bank trying to get his name removed from the wire transfers is why his wire transfer activity was submitted to the IRS with a major red flag on it isn’t spoken of by the scumbag democrat shill Dershowitz.
Spitzers wire transfers would of still meant AML monitoring would of recorded these as suspicious and been required to submit a SAR report. Because he’s a politician, he would of been even a bigger target for monitoring because all politicians are listed on the PEP list which is part of watch list aggregator technology in AML monitoring, no matter how rich he is. Millions of SAR reports are filled every year. That alone might of meant Spitzers SAR just passed over, but once the moron called the bank asking to have his name removed from wiretranfers, that was it.
Dershowitz is just doing what lawyers do. Trying to influence your opinion by burying facts and creating suspicion that there some other force at work here out to get their client. Like he and the team of lawyers did for O.J. Instead of trying to prove O.J.’s innocence, they simply went after discrediting the LA PD. That the racist LA PD was out to get O.J. and falsifying evidence to do it.
If spitzer was put on trial for the wiretransfers to a criminal organization, Dersshowitz would try to destroy the case by claiming the bank singled out Spitzer and was out to get him. He would attack everyone at the bank involved in the process.
The small one.
In his shorts.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1983611/replies?c=16
If the facts are on your side, argue the facts.
If the law is on your side, argue the law.
If neither the facts or the law is on your side, claim the other side is unfair.
This is something I did not pick up in earlier reading. I agree, this should have made anyone suspicious.
As for Derschovitz doing what lawyers do, it'll be interesting to see if the lawyers Spitzer has employed do similarly should he get charged with anything.
Finally, this conspiracy theory gets extra legs, I guess, from the brazen way Spitzer went about pulling his shennanagins. From this great distance, it sounds like a guy who knows how to play fast and loose with little fear of discovery. So, when he is discovered, one wonders why.
If, however, what he was doing was the banking equivalent of cruising the red light district in his governor's limosine ... well, you have to fall back to wondering "What was he thinking?"
I've not heard anything on that score that sounds credible. The whole thing looks hugely incredible.
It’s the ONLY thing that DADDY hasn’t CHEATED for him to do!!
IMHO there is more to it......the story still says :Spitzer INVOLVED in a Prostitution RING! Not just he USED Hookers......I think there is a HUGE difference and unless the NYT is wording it for extra thrills, I think he’s INVOLVED in the RING!
“Is there some list of known front companies that banks have access to, which lets them know that one of their customers is sending money to a front company?”
No. The banks aren’t responsible for this. They simply submit the information detailing the suspect transactions (amounts, frequency, and where it was sent). Once the SAR’s are submitted, then organizations like the IRS and Federal authorities start investigating whats the real identity of what or who the money was wired too.
What’s good for Chuck Berry, says a letter in this morning’s WSJ, should be good for the Spitz. Who’s to disagree, and who’s gonna bet that we’ll see the Spitz do time like Chuck Berry did? And maybe, we’ll all get a little deeper understanding of the Reverend Wright’s point of view along the way!
No. The banks aren’t responsible for this.
Well they are in a way. I heard the front companies for the escort service were offshore, if the wires were sent to accounts in the Caymans, or antilles or some other tax haven, they sure would raise more SAR flags.
I'm wondering if he was washing the money through his campaign accounts so he could explain it to the little woman.
Close?
The charges against him could include - abuse of office for knowlege of a criminal enterprise without prosecuting it, much less reporting it. Selective prosecution of competing prostitution rings. Imposition of RICO laws re the above.
Recall that this was an international operation. There is no way the mob - and perhaps foreign intelligence services did not know of this operation and probably details on the identities of many of the customers, opening them to pressures.
Yeah . . . that and his personality disorder.
sigh..... some people have no sense of humor
..... but I think Eliot Spitzer is holding out for Secretary of the Treasury in the Shrillary administration.
More than that, apparently there has been a recent policy change inside FinCEN looking for patterns among “high public officials” looking for evidence of bribes and payoffs.
This is why Spitzer’s transactions raised flags so quickly - the structuring over a couple months time looked very much like Spitzer was doing “something” in ways an elected official on the up-n-up would not do.
The Grasso case was scarcely the first time Spitzer had focused on sexual themes. After becoming attorney-general in 1999 he went after several prostitution rings, promising to “clean up neighbourhoods” and “prevent the abuse of young women”.In 2003 he filed charges against a New York travel agency, alleging that it organised “sex tours” to southeast Asia, where its operations led “to the systematic exploitation and suppression of young women”.
Yet the praise he earned as “crusader of the year” (Time magazine), and “the enforcer” (Fortune magazine) evaporated the moment he was exposed last week as “client No 9” of the Emperors Club, a purportedly high-class escort service that was revealed in court papers to be a seedy and mostly shambolic front for a low-class prostitution network that stretched from Los Angeles to London.
Far from providing “an exquisite array of carefully selected companions” who would make clients’ lives “more peaceful, balanced, beautiful and meaningful” – as the club’s website boasted – it often scrambled to find prostitutes not addled by drugs.
The court papers, including extracts from wiretaps and reports from an undercover agent who infiltrated the club, reveal endless haggling between clients and pimps over payment and the quality of the girls provided. One girl was described as looking “like a butcher”; another was described as “clueless”.
One girl left an assignation early because she had to pick up her children from school. A London-based girl did not want to provide sex because £500 an hour was “not a price I would ever consider of doing it for [sic]”.
It has also become clear that although the club rated its girls according to their “education, sophistication and ambiance [sic]” – with a three-diamond girl fetching $1,000 an hour and a seven-diamond girl rating $3,100 an hour – the prostitutes were interchangeable and adopted different names to meet a client’s request. One girl had to be reminded that her name for a date was Samantha.
According to the court papers, the Emperors Club nonetheless netted more than $1m over three years, of which $400,000 was kept by about 50 prostitutes.
Bolding mine. So, that's 400k going to 50 hookers for an average of $8,000 each -- over three years. Compare and contrast that with some of the absurd amounts that have been appearing in the press.
The trouble with positing a culprit in the “murder” of Idiot Spitzer is that he is especially despised by thousands of very powerful and connected people in politics and finance. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that someone was watching and waiting for Spitzer to hand them his own demise. But good luck trying to find them in the crowd.
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