Metro

Woman who said Spitzer choked her is busted for trying to shake him down

The Russian woman who accused Eliot Spitzer of choking her in a Plaza hotel room earlier this year was arrested on Monday for allegedly trying to shake down the former governor.

Svetlana Travis, 26, was busted after flying in from Russia and was charged with grand larceny for trying to extort Spitzer in connection with the February incident, according to police.

She allegedly tried to squeeze him for $50,000.

Travis was also charged with second-degree forgery for a second incident, in which she allegedly faked a signature on papers that made an unsuspecting businessman the guarantor on a lease that cost him $18,000.

Her relationship with Spitzer was exposed when police rushed to the Plaza on Feb. 13 after she used her cellphone to dial 911 and said she was having a breakdown and had cut her wrist.

Spitzer answered the door to the room and told the officers that “everything’s fine.”
But when the cops noticed broken glass and bloodstains on the floor, they entered the room and saw Travis, who was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.

Initially, she allegedly claimed that the ex-governor, who resigned in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal, had attacked her.

She said she had “told Spitzer she was going back to Russia, and he got upset and started throwing her around, choked her, threw her to the ground and threatened her,” a source said, adding, “She then broke a glass, cut herself and called 911.”

But in follow-up interviews with cops, she gave conflicting accounts of what happened, then stopped cooperating.

She eventually said she didn’t want to press charges and fled the country.

After the incident, Spitzer filed a fraud and extortion lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court, but pulled the lawsuit two months later.

Travis is believed to be the $5,000-a-night prostitute who has penned a tell-all about her life as a high-priced call girl.

Spitzer, 57 and divorced from his wife, Silda, admitted in the suit to having a “relationship” with Travis, and even said he made “certain payments” to prevent her from making their dalliance public.