Antonella Barba had a tough few weeks there. First, the buxom beauty was reamed by the judges – and the press – for her horrific renditions of Aerosmith, Celine Dion and Corinne Bailey Ray songs. Then, she was tossed off of American Idol before making it to the final twelve.

In between, she became the hottest thing on internet search engines due to the release of some racy – and not so-racy, but still sexy – pics. (If you haven’t seen ‘em yet, head on over to AntonellaBarbaPix.com toot sweet!)

Sources speculated that Hugh Hefner was expected to shell out some moolah for the lovely Miss Barba to pose for his mag. However, Joe Francis, the ‘class act’ who has bedded Paris Hilton and does those Girls Gone Wild videos offered the girl $250,000 to host a video for him. He told TMZ that, “We have reached out to Antonella Barba through her family and are trying to reach her directly in order to offer her a hosting job for one of our upcoming video projects. Just like the American Idol judges, we at Girls Gone Wild are looking for a girl next door, with sexiness, attitude, a carefree spirit and a presence that will command the attention of the Nation."

SugarDVD then joined in the bidding war and said they’d give Antonella $500,000 to become their new spokesperson.

Antonella remained quiet on the matter throughout the competition. Even Simon admitted that she handled herself with class while telling her she couldn’t sing. After her dismissal last week, Antonella opened up to Access Hollywood about the scandal and admitted that “it hurt me”. She also said that the competition is “about singing and this is outside stuff. It’s irrelevant. It’s garbage. It wasn’t mean for the public eye…my personal life was not meant for everyone to know about.”

Her friends called to tell her the pix hit the ‘net, but Antonella had already talked to the producers about it. They knew and “were working to protect me against it.” She admits that she’d “love to know” who leaked the images to the press. She says, “All I know is that personal information has been stolen off my personal computer and I have no way of tracing that.”

Antonella mentioned to People Magazine that she would not do Playboy or anything like that. She’d rather promote herself in a “more classy way.” She’s not “opposed to acting or modeling or something,” however, she would “definitely do pop music.”