from www.nydailynews.com – ‘Grey’s Anatomy” star Eric Dane and his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, must be ruing their sexy hot-tub tape more and more each day – especially with the fetid allegations bubbling up about their tubmate, Kari Ann Peniche.

Three on-the-record sources tell us the dethroned Miss United States Teen queen freely admitted to once being in the sex-for-hire business.

Country singer Mindy McCready tells us Peniche revealed that she hooked up guys with hookers when the two ladies were roommates on VH-1’s “Celebrity Rehab” show.

“Did she say she’d been a madam?” says McCready. “She sure did.”

Bodyguard Joey Gonzalez recalls, “Kari Ann wanted to hire me to follow a girl who worked for her – who she said was skimming money and stealing clients. I declined. But she bragged about how her girls could make $15,000 a month. She introduced me to one girl who told me she’d just gotten a boob job Kari Ann had paid for.”

Author Mark Ebner says Peniche told him she used to “subcontract” for big-time madam Michelle (Nici) Braun, who pleaded guilty this year to money laundering and prostitution.

“Kari Ann said that, unlike Nici, she’d only take 40% of what a girl brought in,” recalls Ebner, adding that Peniche admitted having turned tricks herself. (Another source says Peniche once joked, “I’ve gone from labor to management.”)

Ebner says he was present on July 30 at an L.A. Starbucks when an unnamed informant gave LAPD vice cops the Dane-Gayheart-Peniche tape.

“The police said they already had Kari Ann under surveillance,” says Ebner, who admits bestowing the tape on Gawker.com, which first invited us to the frolic.

On the tape, Dane, “Grey’s” Dr. McSteamy, and Gayheart seem to be aware of Peniche’s alleged line of work.

“I was so bummed when you said that … we had to call one of your girls,” the heavy-lidded Gayheart tells Peniche. “I said, ‘No, [we want] you!”

Marty Singer, the couple’s saber-toothed attorney, argues that Gayheart may just have been referring to “girls to party with them.” Singer insists that neither Gayheart nor Dane had sex with Peniche, that they did not pay her, and that it was not Dane’s credit card we see Peniche reading into a telephone.

“Eric says he wasn’t even present for that scene,” says Singer. “It was edited in later.”

Peniche and her manager, David Weintraub, declined to comment on any of the charges, though Weintraub allowed, “I don’t know her whole past.”