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Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim
A federal investigation has been launched after hackers claimed to have stolen Mitt Romney’s tax returns. The hackers have given Romney until September 28th to pay $1 million in bitcoins or they say they will release the returns. From the article: "The claim was made in a post on the Pastebin site on Sunday that alleged that Romney's federal tax returns were taken from the offices of PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Frankin, Tenn., on August 25 by someone who snuck into the building and made copies of the document. The message author threatened to release the files publicly on September 28 and said copies of the files had been given to Democratic and Republican leaders in that county. Democrats have made Romney's refusal to release his tax returns a key point in their criticism that he is not in touch with working class voters."
Except there was no electronic vault. As the summary quite clearly states, someone broke/snuck into the building and made copies. I'm not even sure where the term "hacker" comes in here... maybe just because they want to be paid in bitcoins?
"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. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied. 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 scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives."
In Mitt's case, there are 2 popular theories as to what he's hiding: 1) he was paying the Mormon church less tithing than he was supposed to be paying; 2) he was one of the tax cheats that applied for amnesty when the Swiss cooperated with the IRS. Hell, it could even be both.
For all his faults, George W. Bush even released 13 years of tax returns. He probably had lots of complex business arrangements, but nothing that you wouldn't expect of a typical high net worth individual. If you aren't doing something that would betray the trust of the American people, who are considering making you the most powerful person in the world, you won't be hiding anything.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Well bitcoins are like wire transfers...its all just meaningless account numbers, but.... the movement has to be consistent. So if I give you X bitcoins, I can see the account they go to when you spend them.... but its just another meaningless account number.
Where things get interesting is, that they mix.... so, if I see a transfer to another account, I can then trace any other transfers to or from that account, or other ones it is associated with.
If alice the crook uses her coins to buy a service from bob, then bob mixes her coins with others of his when he spends them, maybe from some tips he recieved from posting a tip bitcoin account on some web forum.... then he becomes easy to link.... and question. its "old fashioned police work" from there.
Of course, if they are careful, and only use those coins for relatively anonymous transactions which they can turn into cash or unassociated bitcoins.... that trail could go cold fast.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The thing about Bitcoins is you can "transact" them into something completely unattached to the original. So, $1M worth of crypto codes gets sent to the blackmailer, they immediately turn it into $1M worth of equally valid, but completely different crypto codes (probably using servers scattered around the world) and poof, the trail is dead. That's the good, bad, and ugly of Bitcoin in a nutshell.
How is he being taxed twice?
You pay tax on your income, you invest your income (principal) and pay tax on the investment's earnings. You don't pay tax again on the investment principal.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
For all the people complaining about making private things public:
1) At one time in the US, tax returns were public information. When the IRS was new, everyone's info was published to show that everyone paid their share. I'm not saying we need to force people back to this precedent, but just saying that there is a a precedent.
2) The precedent of Presidential Candidates releasing tax returns for 10 years was started by... George Romney, Willard M. Romney's dad. His reasoning was that any one year could be a fluke, but 10 years would show a pattern. Again, not saying they should have broken in and taken his taxes, but the precedent was set.
The people should be prosecuted. They've broken the law and should face consequences. But anyone rising up in anger against the unprecedented nature of this needs to look at precedents.
And then they pay taxes on the "Gains" not the part they previously earned. Nothing is taxed twice. We need to keep pointing that out because the GP was a complete moron.
Where are your messiah's income tax returns
12 years worth, for both Obama and Biden:
http://www.barackobama.com/tax-returns/
Your move.
With the first link, the chain is forged.