While everyone including “Girls Gone Wild” had been making offers to Dupre all this week to join their publication, Francis during a Tuesday morning staff meeting had the revelation of a lifetime …

… did anyone check the archives?!!!!

And with that, WHAMO!

(Once a girl gone wild, always a girl gone wild.)

There Ashley was found in GGW’s archives going wild at age 18…. oh, and not for a thirty second clip. Rather for 7 days of footage, and in same sex encounters, explains AP News moments ago.

Francis had been offering Dupre a million dollars all week. Now, she had saved him the money .. and he had footage of her at age 18.

Says Francis to Associated Press tonight, “It’ll save me a million bucks. It’s kind of like finding a winning lottery ticket in the cushions of your couch.”

Want to see the video???

A preview video is reportedly going to go live on GirlsGoneWild.com within the next few hours.

Says AP” “We actually had been dealing with her rep,” he said. “Our (offer) was the real deal. We just never made the connection.” He said his employees got to work on pulling the footage and planned to offer it on the Web site by Tuesday evening, with a free sampling on the front page and the rest available with a $29.95 monthly subscription.”

Apparently, the following happened.

Dupre was in Miami in 2003 to celebrate her 18th birthday.

After a fight with a friend and being ousted from her hotel, Dupre found the “Girls Gone Wild” bus … signed papers … and spent A FULL WEEK on the bus filming “seven full-length tapes which included nudity and same-sex encounters, according to the company. “I personally ended up buying her a Greyhound bus ticket back home to North Carolina,” Francis told  the AP“ moments ago.

Still developing …