The retired NYPD cop busted last week for running a multimillion-dollar prostitution ring sought expert advice from Eliot Spitzer’s madam before getting his business started, the ex-hooker booker said Sunday.
“I met [ex-Officer Michael Rizzi] a few years back at an event,’’ former “Manhattan Madam” Kristin Davis said.
“Didn’t know him before that, and he sort of mentioned that he was trying to open some sort of business,’’ Davis told AM radio host Frank Morano on his “Morano in the Morning” show.
“I said repeatedly, ‘I don’t want to talk about these things because that’s in my past and I don’t want to talk with some stranger about entering into an illegal venture that he kept trying to discuss,’ ” she said.
Morano asked Davis, “So he alluded basically to maybe getting your help in running some sort of prostitution ring?”
Davis replied, “Yes.”
Davis, a onetime gubernatorial candidate, also charged that Rizzi — who is accused by the feds of masterminding a high-end prostitution ring where johns shelled out as much as $20,000 a night — was given preferential treatment at his arraignment because he’s a man.
The Brooklyn former cop was sprung on $500,000 bail, or a quarter of the $2 million bond she initially faced, she said.
“And here he is taking a city pension and also ex-law enforcement. But because he’s a man, he gets a lesser bail?” said Davis, whose bail was later slashed to $400,000.
Rizzi, 44, was also released on $100,000 bail on state gun-possession charges stemming from his federal case.
Rizzi’s lawyer, Javier Solano, told The Post on Sunday, “There’s absolutely no connection between Michael Rizzi and Kristin Davis.
“There’s nothing there. It’s just somebody who’s trying to get back into some sort of spotlight,” he said.
Federal prosecutors allege that Rizzi’s sex empire began in 2012 and that he ran nearly 60 prostitution Web sites where hookers cost an average $400 to $2,000 a night.
“I get the most business, my girls make the most money, my clients are the wealthiest people in the world,” Rizzi allegedly wrote to one wannabe prostitute, according to court papers.
But Solano maintained that Rizzi ran a completely legal escort service where sex was not involved.
“I have interviewed many escorts that say time and time again, Michael always said to them that’s not this type of business,” the lawyer said.
Rizzi, who is from Bensonhurst, is married to the daughter of Gambino family muscle Richard Juliano.
He retired on a disability pension in 2000 after nine years with the NYPD.
State records show the alleged pimp also secretly runs Nitecap Megastore & Smoke Shop on Staten Island.