Ashley Alexandra Dupré

Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro (born Ashley Youmans; April 30, 1985), better known by the stage name Ashley Alexandra Dupré, is a former call girl.

Jason Itzler, who ran a New York escort service called NY Confidential from 2003 to 2005, met Dupré while she was working as a cocktail waitress at the Hotel Gansevoort in 2004.

Dupré began working for him on the side, using the alias Victoria.

On March 19, the soft porn website Girls Gone Wild featured teasers of Dupré, shot in Miami Beach, Florida in 2003 before she had turned 18.

Dupré presented the company the drivers license of a New Jersey woman named Amber Arpaio, claiming it was Dupré's own.

Company founder Joe Francis—who served a year in jail for a conviction of child abuse and prostitution involving filming two underaged girls in Panama City, Florida, in 2003 who had represented themselves as adults —prepared to release a full DVD of Dupré footage from company archives.

In 2004, at the age of 19, Dupré moved to New York City in pursuit of a music career, and worked as a waitress at a dance club called Viscaya in the Chelsea district.

She also worked at the clubs Pink Elephant and Retox.

NY Confidential was shut down and Itzler sent to prison by Spitzer's New York State Attorney General's office in 2005.

In 2006, Dupré changed her legal name from Youmans to her stepfather's name of DiPietro, stating that she regarded him as "the only father I have known."

She gained fame in 2008 for her role as "Kristen" in the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, which led to the resignation of Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York.

Dupré spent her early childhood years in Beachwood, New Jersey, a borough near the Jersey Shore.

Her father, William Youmans, owned a landscaping business and also worked as a salesman of surfing accessories.

When her parents divorced, Dupré moved to Wall Township, New Jersey with her mother, Carolyn Capalbo, and her stepfather, Mike DiPietro, an oral surgeon.

There, she attended Old Mill (elementary) School and Wall High School until her sophomore year, when she moved to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, to live with her father.

On her MySpace page, Dupré described leaving home at age 17 to escape a broken family and abuse, but her aunt, Barbara Youmans of Seaside Heights, denied that Dupré had a difficult childhood.

"She never had a bad life when she was growing up. She had the best of everything: bicycles, clothing, O'Neill surf boards. ... She was always dressed to kill and got everything she wanted."

By 2008, Dupré was living in a ninth-floor apartment in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.

She maintains that she was concerned about her ability to pay her rent after the man she was living with left following her discovery that he had fathered two children.

On February 13, 2008, Dupré travelled by Amtrak from New York's Pennsylvania Station to Washington, D.C., for an assignation at the Mayflower Hotel with New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

The arrangements had been made by phone between Spitzer and a booker at Emperors Club VIP, and were monitored by federal investigators who had initiated a wiretap after his bank had filed a suspicious activity report regarding money transfers by Spitzer to a front company operated by the escort service.

Caught on the FBI's wiretap was Dupré's response to the booker's mention of other escorts' difficulties with Spitzer.

"I don't think he's difficult," said Dupré.

"I mean it's just kind of like, whatever, I'm here for a purpose. I know what my purpose is. I am not a … moron, you know what I mean."

On March 6, federal authorities arrested four individuals involved with Emperors Club VIP, charging them under federal prostitution and money laundering laws.

Initial news reports and court documents did not identify the agency's clients or call girls by name, referring to Spitzer as "Client 9" and to Dupré as "Kristen".

On March 10, The New York Times identified Spitzer as "Client 9."

Two days later on March 12, the Times identified Dupré as "Kristen."

Her mother, Carolyn Capalbo, told the newspaper that her daughter "was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now."

Capalbo said she was "shell-shocked" when her daughter called to tell her she had been working as a prostitute.

Dupré's only public comment was a brief interview with The New York Times for the March 12 story that revealed her identity.

"I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," Dupré told the newspaper.

"This has been a very difficult time. It's complicated."

On the day the story broke, she posted a message to her MySpace page that said "Yeah, I did it"; it was later changed to read, "Thank you for your support, it means a lot to me."

Dupré uploaded a second song to the Amie Street online music store around 2 a.m. on March 13.

On March 14, New York City radio station Z100 played one Dupré song.

Dupré remained in seclusion in the days after her role in the scandal became public, and became the subject of increasingly intense media coverage.

The Village Voice called her "the most famous hooker in America",.

By March 18, Dupré's profile on MySpace had received over 9 million page views.

Dupré was reportedly offered US$1 million by Hustler magazine to pose nude, and received offers from Penthouse magazine and Vivid Entertainment.