How Bankers Followed the Money Trail That Ousted Eliot Spitzer

Posted on Apr 20, 2010

Center for American Progress

Some key details have cropped up, in the form of a 2007 suspicious-activity report filed by North Fork Bank, that show how former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer got busted, and then ousted, for his, er, active involvement in the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.

It appears that some eagle-eyed employees at North Fork, now Capital One, were tipped off by the report, which listed Spitzer’s occupation as “NYS Governor,” and traced the attempted $5,000 wire transfer that set off internal alarms at the bank. It led to a suspicious company by the vague name of QAT Consulting Group, not to mention Spitzer’s resignation.  —KA

The Albany Times Union via Gawker:

The money flowing through QAT’s accounts included transactions from “a doctor, an acupuncturist, a recruiter in the entertainment industry, an adult film star and a Belgium musician,” the report states, without giving their names. The report also highlights a series of international wire transfers between an unidentified “judge and a female adult entertainer.”

“There were also two foreign incoming wires for $50,000 each from Grosvenor Group and one for $975 from Gian Paul De Blas,” the report states.

In March 2008, shortly after [Cecil G.] Suwal [the young woman who set up the QAT account] and three others were arrested on federal charges filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, published reports in British newspapers identified Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, identified as one of the wealthiest individuals in Great Britain, as an Emperors Club client.

Spitzer, like other Emperors Club clients, was not prosecuted even though his transactions involved interstate fund transfers and prostitutes who crossed state lines to have sex with him.

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