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.
Could this be the beginning of a major new form of crime—data hostage-taking?
Could be a pretty big market.