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TN Man Indicted For Romney Blackmail Attempt: Wanted $1M In Bitcoins
OakDragon writes "A Franklin, Tennessee man has been indicted for his attempt to blackmail Mitt Romney. Michael Mancil Brown allegedly claimed his intent to release some of Romney's pre-2010 tax documents unless one million dollars was converted to Bitcoins and deposited into an account which he specified. Demand letters were sent to Republican and Democratic Party offices in Tennessee, and Pricewaterhouse Coopers (whom he claimed to have stolen the documents from). Pricewaterhouse Coopers denies that he ever obtained such documents. Brown was also attempting to "sell" the documents to others (presumably the Democrats or other interested parties) for the same amount. And yes, he was apparently well aware of the Dr. Evil reference."
It's not like he was asking for anything of value in return.
Its not. It is an opening for an argument about Mitt Romney and his policies which will never be implemented at the top federal level. Page views = ratings...
Republican vs Democrats is always a good place for someone to fight. Do not give into 'we vs they'. There is only us.
"If he just asked for dollars instead of bitcoins, would you still have posted this??!! I don't get it, what makes this story relevant to tech or geeky news??"
A man from Tennessee knows what bitcoins are and he assumes that Romney does too, isn't that wild enough for you??
Look, these tax returns are unique, kinda neat. But if I buy them, they are gonna sit on a shelf for 6 months. I have to find just the right buyer. And even then, I am not sure I can get $1 million for them. I'll give you 50 bucks.
sudo make me a sandwich
It's called the "Democratic Party". Their political opponents have taking to calling them the "Democrat Party" in recent years because "Democratic" sounds the same as "democratic".
$1 Mil in Bitcoins is the total daily volume of MtGrox. I am thinking it might take some work to get that many bitcoins in short order.
mnewberg.com
Another example of why both law enforcement and regulators will have increasing interest in Bitcoin as it becomes more heavily used.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Kind of pointless too, since from what I read Bitcoin transaction hashes are designed to identify exactly where the money came from, so it would be very difficult for him to convert the money into a fiat currency without it being extremely traceable.
There are laundries where this is possible (For a fee). Not every exit to BTC is guarded by the US or its extraditing allies.
Their political opponents have taking to calling them the "Democrat Party" in recent years because "Democratic" sounds the same as "democratic".
You say that like it's a bad thing. Personally, I think your bias is showing, because you are telling us that you like the confusion that may be caused by mixing "Democratic" and "democratic".
"One is my name, the other is not."
I am not a crackpot.
And if you had changed that last sentence to "appeals to Democrats", you'd have Obama. I guess that's why some people are upset over the two party system in US politics.
Bitcoin provides anonymity. Unfortunately like most computer security mechanisms, the weak link is the human being using them.
Even if this guy had the alleged information, and wasn't stupid enough to get caught, it makes no sense for Romney to pay him. If Romney paid the guy $1M in bitcoins, there is nothing stopping him from also selling the info to the democrats or a newspaper immediately afterwards for another $1M. It's not like you can sue the guy for breach of contract.
Omg, you discovered the problem with blackmailing people. Too bad no one else ever thought of that!
Be seeing you...
"Democrat Party" sounds like you're deliberately using bad grammar to demonize democrats, because they rate so low in your estimation.
If Obama's massive spending and borrowing scared the shit out of investors, dragging out the recovery, then Obama was literally about 50,000 times worse than Romney, assuming you wanted to assign all Bain blame to Romney.
For this not to be true, you have to hope and pray investors are not signicantly scared and skittish when politicians spend out of control and scream the only way out is increasing taxes on them.
NO. I'm sure I'm wrong. Go on about your business.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Democrat Party" is generally accepted to be derogatory, by the people who use it and the Democrats themselves. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807ta_talk_hertzberg I remember that Joe McCarthy used it.
Baloney. There is a reason the guy demanded bitcoin instead of USD that has nothing to do with politics, it is due to the technical aspects of bitcoin, namely the fact that it is designed to be untraceable and facilitate anonymous transactions. All made possible (again, UNLIKE conventional currencies) entirely by the Internet and encryption. Slashdot is about nothing if not the double-edged nature of each advance in technology.
It is not untraceable. In fact, if that bribe was paid, Romney could trace it from account to account, no matter how many the blackmailer tried to filter it through. As soon as one of the coins were used in the legal economy (for buying dollars, hosting space or whatever), he would leave traces which would link back to the original account.
Lots of bitcoin have been stolen through bitcoin's history, mostly though scams. And the vast majority of stolen bitcoin has not moved since - for good reasons. It is possible to measure how much of the coin in your wallet is "tainted", coin that came from a scam at some point. Bitcoin exchanges have frozen accounts because they held too much tainted coin, and it's only going to get worse (or better, depending on your perspective) in the future.
There are "mixing" services where you pay one bitcoin to get back one bitcoin (or rather, slightly less) from someone else. This is a way to break a bitcoin's chain of custody. However you're a fool to do this if your coin is clean, since you're likely to get a dirty (potentially less valuable) one in return. It's just charity to scammers and others who managed to get their paws on bitcoin in dubious ways.
Plus, since these services are anonymous and cater to criminals, there's a significant risk they'll break and run one day, so you won't even get a dirty coin back.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.