I have decided to start a new category on I Hate Men…most appropriately called “Stupid Men in the News“. I have decided to create this new category after reading of the abashed Governor Spitzer who apparently dropped up to $80,000 on sex with prostitutes.
He is a married, 48 year old father of 3 daughters, yet he has been diving into bed with prostitutes for as long as a decade. Okay, we hate him already, but that’s not even the part that makes him stupid. There is seriously so much irony in all of it. (And I must say he is not attractive at all. He should have just been happy that he had a wife like Silda Wall Spitzer.)
Firstly, when Spitzer was the attorney general, he led investigations into prostitution, broke up call-girl rings, and prosecuted for corruption, money laundering and prostitution charges. He backed legislation targeting the sex trade, including a provision aimed at men who frequent prostitutes. These men were among an elite group of power brokers and top attorneys who regularly paid for dates at pricey escort agencies. He caught these men by following the chain of money…he investigated pay packages of Wall Street executives, and he made himself familiar with shady financial maneuvers.
So, knowing this first piece of information, one would not suspect Spitzer to partake in such activities as paying for prostitution. Likely so, he was actually being investigated by the IRS when they noticed unusual financial transactions by Spitzer. Apparently, Spitzer had divided up several financial transactions to avoid federal reporting rules. He might have been in the clear, but Spitzer got worried that he could be tied to the transfers and asked the bank to remove his name from the transactions. The bank reportedly refused, not only because of regulations, but also because the money had already gone out. The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought in the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad.
Federal investigators first believed when they began investigating Spitzer that his questionable financial transactions might be linked to campaign-finance violations. It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer was not hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperor’s Club. “We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.
I find it even more ironic that prosecutors reportedly have a series of e-mails and wiretapped phone conversations of Spitzer. What makes it so priceless is that in an interview 2 years ago with then Attorney General Spitzer, he gave some advice for people who break the law. “Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it’s death. You’re giving prosecutors all the evidence we need,” he said.
It has been said that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will resign effective Monday. This is no surprise since he may face prosecution for several charges. If Spitzer intentionally broke up cash transfers into several wire payments to get around the federal disclosure requirement, he could be prosecuted for the crime of “structuring.” If Spitzer made such payments, or used money orders to pay the prostitution ring, he could also face money-laundering charges for paying an entity he knew to be a criminal enterprise.
So, in the end, it appears that Spitzer may have been done in by the same behavior he built a career out of prosecuting.
