Eliot Spitzer Escort Gets 90 Days For $400K Blackmail Plot

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By Daniel J. Solomon October 3, 2017

Svetlana Travis Zakharova, the Russian escort who was accused of extorting $400,000 from Eliot Spitzer, pled guilty to a lesser charge in Manhattan court on Monday and was sentenced to 90 days in prison.

Zakharova was arrested last year and charged with grand larceny and extortion after the ex-New York governor told authorities she tried to blackmail him for money and gifts – and threatened to reveal their affair if he did not agree. Zakharova leveled her own allegations against Spitzer, whom she said choked her – a charge that authorities did not level against Spitzer himself.

She pled guilty under an agreement to extorting a second man with whom she had an affair – and was sentenced to 90 days in prison. She was released because he had already served more than a year in prison while awaiting the outcome of legal proceedings.

Spitzer, a Democrat, was forced from political office in 2008, after he was found to have patronized prostitutes in Washington, D.C. He and wife Silda Wall Spitzer also subsequently divorced.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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