The act of funneling the money through these fake operations is what earned Brener, and a handful of associates, a federal money-laundering charge.
   New York State Department records indicate that several businesses bearing those names were opened in both Kew Gardens Hills and Forest Hills, although the Kew Gardens Hills address is listed as Flushing in the record, using information which likely would have been furnished by Brener himself.
   The dummy corporations were registered as early as 1988, and all are listed as being currently inactive.
   The affidavit notes that “Client 9,” who published reports have established as Spitzer, talked with indicted ring organizer Temeka Lewis about sending his payment for a Feb. 13 liaison to an organization known as “QAT.”
   “Lewis asked Client 9 if there was a return address on the envelope, and Client 9 said no. Lewis asked: ‘You had QAT ...’ and Client 9 said: ‘Yup, same as in the past, no question about it.’”
   An Internet search of a phone number provided in the owner registration information for emperorsclubvip.com, yielded a Middle Village address, along with the number and the name “Emperor’s Club.” Emperorsclubvip.com was the Web site Spitzer, and other clients allegedly used to select their escorts.
   According to the current tenant, Brener lived for three months in the Middle Village building around 2002. He currently lives in New Jersey.
   Paul Yeung, whose father owns the apartment currently, said the man seemed fine at first, but the tenant-landlord relationship soured quickly.
   “They seemed like nice people at first, but (Brener) started coming home late, and they were very noisy,” said Yeung, who now lives in the third-floor apartment which Brener lived in with a woman named Emily.
   Yeung said Brener would often come home late after keeping strange work hours, and start shouting matches with his housemate, whom Yeung assumed was his wife.
   “They were so noisy,” he added. “He would come home at four a.m., there was constant fighting, it was like a bad marriage.”
   After just three months of living with the tumultuous pair, Yeung said his father gave them the boot.
   He added that it didn’t seem to him as if Brener was running an illicit operation out of the apartment. “They seemed like a family, really,” he said.