The reputed Russian hooker who was arrested for extorting Eliot Spitzer squeezed nearly $400,000 in hush money out of him over two years, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Svetlana Zakharova Travis, 25, threatened to expose intimate details of the ex-governor’s romps with her “to [Spitzer’s] family, as well as the media,” said Bronx prosecutor Thomas Boyle, who was assigned to the Manhattan case after DA Cyrus Vance Jr. recused himself due to his personal relationship with the former governor.
From 2014 to 2016, Travis — who is accused of being a $5,000-a-night escort — targeted the disgraced politician in an elaborate extortion scheme that involved him paying up on a regular basis, Boyle said.
“For over two years, [Spitzer] was forced to regularly pay the defendant [between] $3,000 to $50K,” Boyle explained, as Travis wept and shook.
“These payments were in the form of checks . . . and wire payments to name and bank account of the defendant,” he said. “On multiple occasions she would then transfer large amounts of money . . . to Russian banks.”
During this same time Travis had also been targeting another unnamed victim by forging his signature on a lease agreement for an apartment, Boyle said.
In the scheme against Spitzer — who inherited $50 million from his real estate mogul dad — Travis “directly contacted and harassed” members of his family in order to “convey the seriousness” of what she was asking.
It was not clear which Spitzer family members may have been contacted by Travis. The ex-governor divorced his wife, Silda, in 2014, some six years after she stood by him as he was forced to resign in a hooker scandal. The couple has three daughters.
“The defendant is accused of engaging in a systemic and protracted extortion scheme that lasted more than two years,” Boyle, who added that Travis is “under investigation” for “ prostitution, promoting prostitution . . . and other similar extortion schemes.”
Cops believe that Travis penned an article under the name “Svetlana Z,” in which she bragged about her life as a call girl and claimed she “managed to save $200,000, by f- -king for money.”
Spitzer’s relationship with Travis was made public in February, when she accused him of choking her at the Plaza Hotel. She later fled to Russia.
Judge Ushir Pandit-Durant set bail for Travis at $1 million.
“She has been studying film in New York and California and she will make every court date, we just ask that you release her to fight these charges,” said lawyer Rigodis Appling in unsuccessfully arguing she be released.