Posted on 03/11/2008 2:53:12 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
He ruthlessly investigated the pay packages of Wall Street executives and was so familiar with shady financial maneuvers that he rose to become the top racketeering prosecutor in Manhattan.
But in the end, it appears that Spitzer may have been done in by the same behavior he built a career out of prosecuting.
In fact, it seems he was tripped up by some of the very financial accounting methods he used so successfully against multibillion-dollar Wall Street firms.
For one thing, the governor initially drew the attention of federal investigators because of cash payments to an account operated by a call-girl ring, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of because of the sensitivity of the case.
Banks are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports to the government whenever they observe something they fear may be a crime.
In court papers, Client 9 — identified by another law enforcement official as Spitzer — hurried to get more than $4,000 in cash to pay a call girl at a Washington hotel.
That kind of activity, repeated over time, is just the kind of thing that would set off alarm bells with a bank's compliance officer, who is trained to be on the lookout for what is called structuring or "smurfing" — a pattern of transactions aimed at hiding the nature or purpose of certain money.
Spitzer of all people should have known that, said Miami-based lawyer Gregory Baldwin, credited with coining the term "smurfing" in the 1980s as a federal prosecutor.
"I think he's done enough cases where he's charged money laundering that he would know exactly what kind of information you get from the banks. It's such a perfect example of what goes around, comes around," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
So Spitzer was on a Smurfing Safari?
I would not be surprised if they ultimately track money he spent back to even more corruption with crime families.
Yep, that pretty much says it all.
--Ray Bradbury - Zen in the art of writing
Now I wonder when Spitzer will say, "We did not have sex, and it's not a crime to pay for a visit with a pretty girl."
Now THAT, my FRiend, would be worthy of an extra pot of coffee and a bag of Movie Theater Style Popcorn just for breakfast...forget about lunch.
Hypocrite.
That’s a hellava lot of shoe money Mrs. Spitzer missed out on.
No, it was smurfing because of Spitzer’s blue balls.
Oh, and IMO...no, I AM afraid that that list of clients and monetary exchanges go WAY beyond Mr. Spitzer. To our (the American taxpayer) mutual loss. Judging by the few phone excerpts published, the ONLY way the former AG of NY can say that he DIDN’T know he was knowingly participating in money laundering would be a medium sized stroke, with measurable brain damage. Ain’t bloody likely, in my book...unless the Clintons still have more political capital ATM then I think they do, speaking as a socioanthropologist and political analyst, rather than someone with their tinfoil hat screwed on too tight.
I just visited DU to sizeup their reaction to the whole affair. There’s a faction that keeps screaming about political motivation in investigating Spitzer. Is their a single molecule of evidence that this is the case? I know for a DUer the fact that the DOJ is under Bush’s administration is plenty of evidence that “selective investigating” has taken place, but are their any abnormalities concerning the investigation process? Isn’t he under tighter financial scrutiny since he is the governor of a state? How did he think he was going to get away with this?
Unfortunately, you'd get banned if you asked WHAT, if any, NON-politically motivated investigations Spitzer conducted.
at least that is what i'm hearing.
doesn't it bug them he was violating the laws he was sworn to uphold when he was AG? Doesn't matter what the laws were.
Spitzer doesn't care about any laws, he just used them to further his own political career. That was obvious when he was pushing drivers licenses for illegals. The hypocrisy even then was so thick you could cut it with a knife and I knew it was just a matter of time before he imploded.
at least that is what i'm hearing.
Not exactly. These regulations were in place as the "know your customer" regulations, several years before the Patriot Act ever saw the light of day (yes, they are pre-9/11). Spitzer undoubtedly used them as AG in New York when he was AG, so he definitely knew what could happen (he just somehow thought it wouldn't happen to him)...
the infowarrior
correct me if i’m wrong but didn’t the patriot act reduce the amount needed to set off the alarm? heard that somewhere.
Possibly, I'm not sure, but the $10,000.00 figure was originally part of the "know your customer" regulations which preceded the Patriot Act by a number of years, so the precedent was set then, not later...
the infowarrior
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