If there is a lesson from former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's scandal-driven fall (aside from the most obvious one), it is this: banks are paying attention to even the smallest of your transactions.
For this we can thank modern software, and post-9/11 U.S. government pressure to find evidence of money laundering and terrorist financing. Experts say that all major banks, and even most small ones, are running so-called anti-money-laundering software, which combs through as many as 50 million transactions a day looking for anything out of the ordinary.
In Spitzer's case, according to newspaper reports, it was three wire transfers amounting to just $5,000 apiece that set alarm bells ringing.
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