Disgraced Spitzer Faces Campaign Cash Inquiry

Prosecutors are homing in on the disgraced former New York state governor Eliot Spitzer, by investigating whether he used money raised for political campaigns to pay for travel and other expenses relating to his meetings with prostitutes.

The New York Times, which broke the story of his involvement with a prostitution ring that led to his resignation on Wednesday, said the inquiry into his actions was focusing on three trips in which he employed the services of women supplied by the Emperors Club VIP, a New Jersey-based operation. One of those meetings was the February 13 liaison at a Washington hotel that FBI agents wire-tapped.

Senior aides in Spitzer's office told the newspaper he had stressed that no campaign funds had been used to fund his trysts. But investigators will be studying whether he kept a clear separation between public and private matters in his financial affairs, as US law requires.

The move by prosecutors to examine the question of campaign funds came as the woman who met Spitzer in Washington, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, remained in the center of a media frenzy.

Dupre - who began life as Ashley Youmans and worked as a prostitute under the pseudonym "Kristen", charging $1,000 an hour - is not shying away from the spotlight. While her whereabouts is unknown, Dupre, also a struggling musician, has been active through websites.

Her Myspace page temporarily went down on Thursday, but was back up overnight and totting up impressive traffic. It has received 7m hits and almost 3m plays of her song What We Want.

That song and another, Move Ya Body, are posted on the download site Amie Street and have received 300,000 visits.

The site allows users to download songs free, but charges up to 98 cents according to its popularity. Move Ya Body was posted by Dupre after she revealed her identity as the Spitzer call girl to the Times on Tuesday. Josh Boltuch, of Amie Street, said the song hit the 98 cents ceiling within five hours, despite being posted at 2am, a faster ascent than any track on the site.

Comments on the site were generally favorable. "Great voice and music, very creative, trend setter," said one user who had paid the 98 cents.

But there were already signs that her 15 minutes of fame might be drawing to an end. The New York radio station Z100 was all over What We Want on Thursday but stopped playing the song overnight after listeners said they did not like it.

Chad Jensen, a music artist manager in California, was unimpressed when he heard What We Want. "It's hard to tell if she can really sing and I wasn't taken by the song - it didn't do anything for me."

But other managers and record labels were almost certainly looking to snap her up, he said. "It's hard enough to get attention for people with real talent, so here is this woman with all the focus on her - somebody's going to take a shot and put her in a studio."

On Myspace, Dupre talks about leaving a broken home aged 17 to flee abuse, and losing everything again and again. But reporters who staked out the New Jersey home where she grew up were surprised to discover a white brick house in a comfortable part of the Jersey Shore.

A childhood friend told Newsday: "From what I know, she had a normal, fine childhood. They had a lot of money and a lot of things. It's not a rough neighborhood."