Sure, the prostitution scandal was his real downfall, but software made by the Cary company might have been used to track his suspicious financial transactions.

SAS won't say for certain, but its software is used by banks and government agencies to mine huge databases of information.

SAS has for years sold powerful data-crunching systems that financial companies use to monitor, analyze and flag behavior that could indicate ill-gotten gains, shady expenditures or money laundering.

SAS Anti-Money Laundering software, introduced in 2002, can spot even small aberrations across multiple patterns of activity. In Spitzer's case, it was several large withdrawals and records of payments made to a shell company.

Since 2001 especially, banks report these questionable patterns aggressively through so-called suspicious activity reports. They are required to do so under federal law as a means to thwart terrorist or other illegal efforts.

But did software built in Cary help finger Spitzer?

SAS spokesman Dave Thomas said the company has no way to verify whether its software was used in the investigation of Spitzer. "And if we could, we wouldn't be able to tell you," he said, because of company disclosure rules.

Spitzer is known to have accounts at multiple banks. One mentioned in news reports about Spitzer, Capital One's North Fork bank, does not use SAS Anti-Money Laundering software, Thomas said. But another, HSBC, uses SAS software to monitor credit-card activity.

And other banks are possibly involved in the case -- SAS has dozens of bank customers including Wells Fargo, UBS, BB&T, SunTrust and Credit Suisse.

Still, SAS isn't the only company that sells anti-money laundering software. Rivals include Accuity, Actimize, Mantas and Norkom Technologies.