Posted on 09/05/2012 8:41:13 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
An anonymous individual or group claims to have obtained "all available" tax returns associated with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The alleged hackers claim to have accessed them via computers in the Franklin, Tenn., office of professional services firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
An anonymous posting on a file sharing website claims PwC was hacked; the same site has been used to boast of other high-profile corporate hacks.
How'd they pull it off, allegedly? The posting states:
"[Romney's tax returns] were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building."
Bribes go a long way, apparently.
President Obama's 2012 election opponent has faced calls to release his tax forms prior to 2010. The former CEO of Bain Capital has refused to do so.
Wonder if this will change his mind.
After "all 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied," the perpetrators claim, having sent Mitt's tax returns "to Democratic and GOP offices in the county."
"A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages," which are almost entirely encrypted.
That's where the fun part comes in.
The group claims it will "release all available files to the public on the 28 of September, 2012," unless someone coughs up $1 million ... in Bitcoins.
The purported hacker(s) issued this threat to PwC:
"All major news media outlets are going to be sent an encrypted copy of the most recent tax years that your company had on file since you did not have them all in a convenient electronic form."
"The years before 2010 will be of great interest to many. If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary."
"The deal is quite simple. Convert $1,000,000 USD to Bitcoins (Google if if you need a lesson on what Bitcoin is) using the various markets available out in the world for buying."
"Transfer the Bitcoins gathered to the Bitcoin address listed below. It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the Bitcoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished."
"The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever. Failure to do this before September 28, the entire world will be allowed to view the documents with a publicly released key to unlock everything."
"Bitcoin Address to Stop Release: [redacted]"
"At the same time, the other interested parties will be allowed to compete with you. For those that DO want the documents released will have an different address to send to."
"If $1,000,000 USD is sent to this account first; then the encryption keys will be made available to the world right away. So this is an equal opportunity for the documents to remain locked away forever or to be exposed before the September 28 deadline."
"Who-ever is the winner does not matter to us."
Romney is locked in a dead heat with Obama with two months to go before the election. One way or another, the tax return issue keeps rearing its ugly head.
Should Mitt release more tax returns?
Yes, it's about transparency!
No, why should he?!?
Who are you voting for in November?
Obama-Biden
Romney-Ryan
Thats the way Obama rolls. There is no such thing as a sealed document or private record.
Unless it is his own.
Bingo!
Both anonymous and occupy are direct arms of Obama, and also linked to Hamas. Just shoot on sight already.
Hacked? Yeah, right. They were leaked by orders of King Obama with the ‘hack’ story used as cover. Why would the liberals treat this any differently than they treat our national security secrets?
Look at it this way....whatever Romney had has been hacked and is known by the hackers, AND by Obama, period.
The likely fact is that there is no “there” there. So the hackers are trying to get their booty by offering up worthless information to the stupid MSM who WILL buy it.
Do you have an address for these hackers?
Can they break into Occidental and Colombia and Harvard archives? Perhaps the INS or wherever Barry0’s naturalization papers are?
Real potential here . . .
They got copies off of Dan Rathers fax machine.
I smell felony blackmail....
I’m sure PWC’s clients are very happy about this development. I’m sure there are plenty of zERO supporters who do business with PWC. Anything to Win.
No wonder they love PFC Bradley Manning so much.
Looks like Bitcoins was hacked.
I fully expect the "hackers" only use their powers for evil.
The Romney people had to anticipate that someone would at least attempt to hack his records. I wonder if the they have the gumption and foresight to plant fake returns just for this scenario?
Spot on. Sounds like Dan Rather is burning the midnight oil at his local Kinkos!
It is inconceivable that there are no liberals working for a perfumed outfit like Price Waterhouse. If this is true, the likeliest explanation is that Obama gave the order to leak, and the usual libs came through for him.
Since this operation is likely to throw a little mud back on Obama, it's not surprising that he waited a while before pulling another of his socialist leak jobs.
Unless it is his own.
So are there really no conservative hackers (or libertarian hackers, who realize that Obama is a bigger threat to their ideal than Romney, or hackers with any other motivation to bring down Obama) who can return the favor by getting into the student records at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard?
The people who will cough up the money, if this report is believable, is Price Waterhouse Cooper. They are the ones who were hacked and they are a HUGE accounting firm. They have the money.
If the files are true and PWC doesn’t respond, they’ll be open to a lawsuit from Romney for far more money than what the extortionists want and, in addition, thousands of other clients with millions of other dollars in billing are likely to pull their accounts for fear that they, too, could be hacked and left dangling.
My guess is that there’s a 90% chance this all quietly goes away and, if so, we’ll never know what happened. But if this leaks out, you can bet they are likely fakes and that PWC didn’t come up with the ransom because they knew they were forgeries and will likely testify that they’re forged.
Couldnt the purchasers of said documents be charged with buying stolen property or something of the sorts?
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