Romney Tax Return "Blackmail"

[Dalton]

$1 million in Bitcoins ransom

About 7 p.m. last Thursday, members of the Williamson County Democratic Party returned to their offices in Franklin, Tenn., for a meeting, and found a padded manila envelope that had been dropped through the mail slot. Inside was a small USB drive and a piece of paper containing an outlandish claim: Tax documents belonging to Mitt and Ann Romney had been stolen.

Peter Burr, the chairman of the Williamson County Democratic Party, said he thought the package was “obviously a scam.”

“We did not plug the thumb drive into anything,” Burr told TPM. “I almost threw this thing away when we got it.”

A similar package was discovered at the offices of the Williamson County Republican Party last Friday.

Meanwhile, over the last few days on Pastebin.com, a website popular with hackers, a pair of posts have been circulating, one with language similar or indentical to that found in the envelopes at the county party offices. The posts, whose authors are unknown, say that Romney tax documents were stolen several days ago from a PricewaterhouseCoopers’ office in Franklin.

“Romney’s 1040 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,” one post reads. “A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney’s tax returns before 2010.”

A second post says that encrypted copies of the tax documents will be sent to major media outlets, and demands the equivalent of $1 million in Bitcoins, a virtual currency, in exchange for a purge of “the keys to unlock the data.” Alternately, the post says that anyone interested in the documents can send the same amount of money in exchange for the release of the encryption keys.

“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,” the post reads.

On Wednesday, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a statement that there was no evidence that anything had been stolen, but the company did acknowledge that it was working with the Secret Service:

We are aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.

George Ogilvie, a Secret Service spokesman, confirmed to TPM that the agency is “investigating the incident,” but could not add further details.

In an interview with The Tennessean, the executive director of the Williamson County Republican Party said she also initially thought to treat the matter as a hoax.

“A million dollars seemed kind of low,” Jean Barwick told the paper. “If you’re going to go for a million, why not go for $100 million.”

At first, she contacted only the state GOP, to see if it got a similar package. But then on Wednesday, Barwick decided to contact the police. Charles Warner, a spokesperson for the Franklin Police Department, told TPM that based on what officers were told, the department called the Secret Service. (Warner added that the Franklin police did not respond to any complaints at the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ during August.)

No one from either county party appears to have attempted to look at the contents of the USB drives.

Burr, the Democratic Party Chairman, said he had kept the USB drive in his briefcase. At one point, Burr said, he considered plugging the drive into an old computer, but he said the “last thing I wanted to do was plug it in to a computer that I cared about.”

Wednesday morning, Burr’s office started to get calls.

“We got a call from an affiliate of The Tennessean newspaper here,” Burr said. “Almost immediately after that we got a call from the Secret Service.”

Secret Service members came by a few hours later, and took the materials with them.

[Simon_Jester]

Interesting case; it would be kind of weird if it were anything but a hoax. The blackmail attempt makes it unlikely that it's a political idealist, and I can't think of anyone else who'd care enough to try the real thing (as opposed to a hoax).

[PainRack]

Errr...... I don't get the nuance. Why not just plug it into a computer and check it out?

[Mr Bean]

Errr...... I don't get the nuance. Why not just plug it into a computer and check it out?

The files are encrypted, without the encryption key all you can see is that there are files, the relative size of the files and that's it.

It's like me showing you a safe and telling you inside is Mittens tax records for the last ten years. You can see that yes it's big enough to contain those records but it could just be an empty safe or maybe I'm keeping my unicorn in there.

[Grumman]

It's like me showing you a safe and telling you inside is Mittens tax records for the last ten years. You can see that yes it's big enough to contain those records but it could just be an empty safe or maybe I'm keeping my unicorn in there.

Or in this case, a virus. When someone tells you they steal electronic documents and that is why you should access this flash drive, it makes sense to be a bit cautious.

[Steve]

Alternatively, it could be loaded with trojans or something of that sort. A grand hacker prank.

[General Zod]

Alternatively, it could be loaded with trojans or something of that sort. A grand hacker prank.

That's easy enough to test though. Get a junker laptop that nobody cares about and isn't connected to any networks. Plug it in and see what's there.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, if it does contain Mitt Romney's tax returns, you'd want to be sure you were safe from a legal standpoint. I honestly don't remember what the law is here; we're talking about illegally obtained documents with confidential information (like I don't know, Mitt's social security number).

Plus, it screams "hoax," and if it isn't a hoax, all you really have to do is nothing and it'll be up on Wikileaks in short order. Inaction is very tempting at times like this, from a certain point of view.

[bilateralrope]

Lets say someone does decrypt it, and sees something that looks like Romney's tax returns. How can anyone know that the information is accurate unless they already have access to them ?

[General Zod]

Lets say someone does decrypt it, and sees something that looks like Romney's tax returns. How can anyone know that the information is accurate unless they already have access to them ?

Short of going straight to Mittens or his accountant and asking him to verify it, there's pretty much no way to.

[SAMAS]

Errr...... I don't get the nuance. Why not just plug it into a computer and check it out?

The files are encrypted, without the encryption key all you can see is that there are files, the relative size of the files and that's it.

It's like me showing you a safe and telling you inside is Mittens tax records for the last ten years. You can see that yes it's big enough to contain those records but it could just be an empty safe or maybe I'm keeping my unicorn in there.

So says the guy with the Twilight Sparkle avatar.

Seriously, I think it's more like being wary of a virus, trojan, or other form of malware. The guy said: “last thing I wanted to do was plug it in to a computer that I cared about.”

[FireNexus]

On reddit earlier someone made the case that the transaction histories for the BTC addresses they gave create ASCII strings. One results in a QR code with an incomplete imgur URL, the other the words "Prove it".

reddit thread in question

[Dalton]

This is becoming very surreal in a Neal Stephenson sense.

[Solauren]

This could be real.

The terms and language aside, think about it.

Imagine if those are Romney's returns, and there is stuff on their he would like to keep underwraps.

The blackmailers are shopping the documents around to the highest bidder right now, with the threat of a public release as motivation.

Think about it
if they are real, Romney doesn't want them released
if they are real, the Democracts might want to take a look at them for ammo against him
if they are real, a major news organization might want them as a major story.

By setting a dead-line, that puts the preasure on the people being offered to either reveal them on their own terms, or squash them.

And if no one pays them, it's a wonderful clusterfuck going into the election in November.

A good concept, if a very poorly worded (and probably dangerous) execution.

[bilateralrope]

The Romney camp could just deal with anything contained within by calling it a fake. Even if it's real, the only people who know that it is are those who have access to Romney's real tax returns.

Sticking malware on it doesn't make much sense. A computer booted from a cd/dvd with no hard drives should be immune to any malware, but will be able to see enough to notice things that aren't tax returns on the drive.

Personally I think the person is after the money, thinking that bitcoins are anonymous enough that he won't be caught. My only question is if bitcoins are truly that anonymous.

[Spoonist]

Personally I think the person is after the money, thinking that bitcoins are anonymous enough that he won't be caught. My only question is if bitcoins are truly that anonymous.

That's what caught my eye. Bitcoins are fameously not anonymous, its just a wish/myth perpetuated by the wannabe leet crowd.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

[Blayne]

Well wait, suppose there's actual information that looks like tax returns and has all the numbers and information tax returns would have and it meets the profile of a rich person like Mitt and further we suppose there's sufficient information there to cast a negative light on Mitt.

Regardless of whether that information is true or not, can't the Dems' pull the earlier Harry Reid trick more convincingly? Of saying "If these aren't really your tax returns then you'll have problem proving it right...? Thought so."

The denial of proving them wrong could serve as ammunition of proof in of itself maybe?