Without knowing more details about the cash transfers, there are a couple of simple scenarios that make sense. They basically all revolve around transferring sums more than $10,000. Federal law requires that all transfers over $10K be sent to the Feds -- this was originally meant to catch drug dealers.
Meaning, all checks, wire transfers, credit card charges, etc., are sent to the Feds. My guess is that they look for repeated transfers and try and tie the transfers to legitimate business events -- paying a vendor, etc.
My guess is that Spitzer was moving hundreds of thousands per year. And this naturally stood out in the Fed's system, both because of the amount and his position.
The routine check revealed no business reason to transfer the money, nor gifts to children, relatives or charities, etc.
So if Spitzer was just moving his personal money to an offshore or blind account, and the Feds couldn't access where the money went after that, they would naturally assume that something was being covered up. Pretty simple.
Public servants shouldn't be shuffling money around unbeknownst to the public. It's the appearance of conflict which is the issue here. Also, their investments need to be placed in blind trusts so they can't be accused of profiting from decisions they make. This is standard practice now. Recognizing such, if a state Governor is moving money to invisible accounts then this would definitely merit an investigation, routine at first, to find out what's happening.
To believe that Spitzer was unaware of the law that requires banks to turn in transfers of 10,000 dollars or more is unbelievable. Of course he knew better than to do that. Rush Limbaugh was was getting cash out for Drugs and he always took less than 10 thousand. The prosecutor had to get a court order to examine Rush's account.
Spitzer, Rush and every other bank client with lots of money on deposit knows the BANK HAS TO TURN THEM IN IF they did a single transfer of at least 10,000 dollars.
Guess what .. if you have a lot of money on deposit every bank I have dealt with .. at the time of making a large deposit.... warned me about the 10,000 dollar law. From Bank Of America to a single office bank with less than 20 million in deposits, it is always the same. They go out of their way to warn the depositor that he should never withdraw 10 grand or more.
Banks follow the law to the letter and not one step more. If they ever turned in a customer when they were not required to do by law, and the customer turned out to be innocent you can bet that banks large depositors would go to another bank in a heart beat...that is if they found out. And the innocent depositor's attorney would threaten to file a law suit and publicize it. To keep the word from getting out that they had turned in someone with out legally being required to do so, they would have no option but to pay millions to keep the person they turned in silent. Onecould quickly become an fired bank president. And every bank president gets so informed.
No one would leave large sums in a bank that would turn turn them in to the FBI when the Bank was not required to do so.
THERE is zero WAY THAT SPITZER WOULD TRANSFER 10 GRAND OR MORE. He was buying a 1,000 dollar hooker plus expenses... She cost 3,200 bucks and he put a deposit down on the next one for a total of over 4 thousand bucks. He had the money sent to the Mayflower Hotel. I is not likely to have been the first time he had done that.
Prostitution rings demand cash in advance. You can't repossess sex and they can't sue for non payment. And the Johns only pay when the gal shows up ready for sex. Pay anyone but the hooker and the hooker may not actually show up. And hookers find out early that if they let someone else get the money, they may not get paid.
I think either a major stockholder or a major customer of the bank had a reason to want Spitzer's rear end taken down. I suspect on several occasions the bank was instructed to send the money to a hotel. It would not be hard to hire a private eye to check that out. A hundred bucks to each of the hotel bell hops, room service waitresses, room maids.. etc, would reveal what Spitzer was doing in the rooms. One of them just might have gotten one of his marked bills as a tip.
If a major player in the bank knew for a fact that Spitzer was doing hookers,and presented it to the board of the bank, and said do something or my money gets withdrawn, or a member of the board of the bank had proof of what Spitzer was doing and wanted Spitzers rump, the board would then, off the record of course, decide to have the bank management turn Spitzer in.
There is no way a president or any other bank officer would turn in a client they had no personal reason to turn in unless required to do so by law. There is no way that Spitzer did a 10,000 dollar or greater transfer. Somebody high up in the bank wanted his rump and the bank had to know what he was doing before they turned him in.
It is not likely they revealed that they knew what he was doing to the law. More likely they implied he was being blackmailed or worse. A Governor being possibly blackmailed would require an investigation. Hiring a hooker for a few nights would not.
But bet the farm the bank knew what Spitzer was doing with the money before they turned him in.