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Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Because He Couldn't Figure Out How to Convert PDFs to Word Files (slate.com)
There are two types of people in this world: those who know how to convert PDFs into Word documents and those who are indicted for money laundering. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is the second kind of person , Slate reports. From the report: Back in October, a grand jury indictment charged Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates with a variety of crimes, including conspiring "to defraud the United States." On Thursday, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a new indictment against the pair, substantially expanding the charges. As one former federal prosecutor told the Washington Post, Manafort and Gates' methods appear to have been "extensive and bold and greedy with a capital 'G,' but ... not all that sophisticated." One new detail from the indictment, however, points to just how unsophisticated Manafort seems to have been. Here's the relevant passage from the indictment. I've bolded the most important bits:
Manafort and Gates made numerous false and fraudulent representations to secure the loans. For example, Manafort provided the bank with doctored [profit and loss statements] for [Davis Manafort Inc.] for both 2015 and 2016, overstating its income by millions of dollars. The doctored 2015 DMI P&L submitted to Lender D was the same false statement previously submitted to Lender C, which overstated DMI's income by more than $4 million. The doctored 2016 DMI P&L was inflated by Manafort by more than $3.5 million. To create the false 2016 P&L, on or about October 21, 2016, Manafort emailed Gates a .pdf version of the real 2016 DMI P&L, which showed a loss of more than $600,000. Gates converted that .pdf into a "Word" document so that it could be edited, which Gates sent back to Manafort. Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 million in income. He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort. Manafort then sent the falsified 2016 DMI P&L .pdf to Lender D. So here's the essence of what went wrong for Manafort and Gates, according to Mueller's investigation: Manafort allegedly wanted to falsify his company's income, but he couldn't figure out how to edit the PDF.
Manafort and Gates made numerous false and fraudulent representations to secure the loans. For example, Manafort provided the bank with doctored [profit and loss statements] for [Davis Manafort Inc.] for both 2015 and 2016, overstating its income by millions of dollars. The doctored 2015 DMI P&L submitted to Lender D was the same false statement previously submitted to Lender C, which overstated DMI's income by more than $4 million. The doctored 2016 DMI P&L was inflated by Manafort by more than $3.5 million. To create the false 2016 P&L, on or about October 21, 2016, Manafort emailed Gates a .pdf version of the real 2016 DMI P&L, which showed a loss of more than $600,000. Gates converted that .pdf into a "Word" document so that it could be edited, which Gates sent back to Manafort. Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 million in income. He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort. Manafort then sent the falsified 2016 DMI P&L .pdf to Lender D. So here's the essence of what went wrong for Manafort and Gates, according to Mueller's investigation: Manafort allegedly wanted to falsify his company's income, but he couldn't figure out how to edit the PDF.
Is there anybody with an IQ above room temperature still working in the US executive branch?
I don't respond to AC's.
Open source could have saved the day for this a-hole. But luckily for the rest of us he's an idiot.
Just changed the extension from .pdf to .doc?
Sees no "Russians" required.
trump can't pay $200 /year for adobe pro?
Microsoft Office is to goddamned complimicated to figure out.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
step 1: load your word doc
step 2: After 30-40 futile attempts to download a converter in windows, finish removing the last of your malware and load your converted
step 3: realize the PDF was converted from a JPG
step 4: Spend 3 hours on wikipedia learning about OCR and install Cygwin and related packages
step 5: feed your PDF based on a JPG into your converted
step 6: realize this is about as productive as feeding a toddler into a wood chipper
step 7: Wear out the delete key on your keyboard as you manually parse through your newfound unholy amalgam of character recognition and interplanetary gliphs desperately trying to glean a legible document
step 8: Brew a cup of coffee and give sincere thought to life in Prison.
step 9: close the 6 tabs you opened for youtube documentaries that have now given you the endurance to stay awake another 4 hours into the night.
step 10: voila! you now have justification to litter crucial evidence about your misdoings all over the desktop. Finish a lukewarm litre of gin next to the exaust fan of your laptop and get some well earned rest! DOC to PDF is easy as 123!
Good people go to bed earlier.
Open with -> Word
At least the toddler-in-chief didn't hire SMART criminals.
Microsoft Office is to goddamned complimicated to figure out.
Manafort had no trouble producing falsified documents with Word, but you can't even work a browser text box without issues.
I doubt he needs this skill where he's going.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Fear the intelligent evil people. The stupid ones do this kind of stuff.
Even Ross Ulbricht (Sik Road pioneer and jail bird) got caught in part because he asked about a techy problem on on a techy forum using his own name, while developing the code.
When I consider how to get away with crimes, the primary thing is working out how to break any link between yourself and your actions and between yourself and the victims. The secondary thing is to leave no trace in your personal effects. My legit job seems like a far better deal though.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yeah, I'm sure if he only know how to edit a PDF he'd have committed the perfect crime.
FTFA: He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the “Word” document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort.
His issue is he didn't know how to convert .doc to .pdf.
Asking for a friend
Two possible ways to go here:
1) Hire teenager, who for dirt cheap has the time to sail the rocky shoals of PDF and DOC standards to do what you want, is way too disorganized for investigators to find anything. Cost: $200 and a few illegal beer runs. Downside: May take several passes to correct grammar.
2) Hire Russian (to be more specific, Ukrainian) hacker to simply re-work the original PDF Postscript into what you want. When the investigators come knocking do you think they will be able to find the Russian hacker to get original documents? No. Cost: $50k, delivered in ETH please, and dead drops of USB sticks in place of meetings. Downside: All USB sticks you get back will be laden with latest viruses that will track you while you shower.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Also asking for a friend.
#DeleteFacebook
if your in politics or any dirty work. But i wonder if there was such a person, and he did the conversion, would he also be liable in this case, if not the one blamed fully?
Neither of these two people have worked for the US Executive branch.
But, according to TFA, Gates would've passed the "Can you convert PDF to MS Word" test, which you consider so vitally important to determining one's intelligence.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
tell us more about what you think about the people trump hires
apparently you agree that trump can only hire idiots
But as soon as they can get a TRRURUUMMMPPPP! story talking about PDF's... that's a newsworthy tech story
:rollseyes:
That is why you keep two sets of books. One for the tax man, showing a loss. And one for the banks, showing a profit.
That's why it's called double-entry bookkeeping.
Links about Trump from 18 different organizations
Iâ(TM)m not slow. Indeed itâ(TM)s not a useful skill for one in a million people to have. So how does one do this?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If only they had used APK's hosts file engine then they wouldn't have gotten caught.
you deserve to be locked away in prison if you really believe that you can trust your secrets to some clown you found on craigslist
I can't wait for the tweets..."Sad, no real evidence"...bleh
This reply is a neutral response to the above.
There was a lot more, but this is what is being used for charging evidence.
Oh, and, yes, we still have your cloud data.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
with the best of the best!
Translation: I will surround myself with ninnies and nincompoops!!!!
It's retaining distinct copies of a document before, and after, adding fraudulent content that trapped the man. Simply discarding previous, fraudulent versions of the document would have cleared the paper trail. Worse for careless criminals: Word documents normally retain some local history of changes on the author's computer, and are far more dangerous in terms of tracking when someone added fraudulent content. PDF is _much_ safer.
PDF is not as user-familiar, and the better What You See is What You Get editors for it do cost money. But the idea that a criminal is making themselves more vulnerable because they work in PDF, not World, is foolish indeed.
Stop polluting this site with your American propaganda. Not everyone is a Clinton voter or even lives in US and cares about your silly little feuds with Russia.
STFU and leave.
This would have never happened in a world without closed, proprietary file formats.
So Hillary must be smart with all the Bleachbit software, she's a friggin genius!
Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 million in income. He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort.
Manafort didn't know how to turn a word document into a PDF, not the reverse as the headline claims.
Seriously, don't the editors even read the submissions?
Ken
the sort of people who go into politics (in ALL parties) are the sort whose primary skills are glad-handing, hand shaking, slick-talking, and convincing any audience that they are being listened to and their issues will be addressed. Nowhere in that list of qualifications are [a] morality, [b] ethics, [c] competence at ANY other human endeavor.
Manafort was a Republican establishment tool who was pushed onto the Trump team at the demand of the establishment sort as Trump was closing in on the nomination. Happily (for Trump) the man Trump never wanted in the first place turned out to be such a currupt swamp dweller than Trump was able to rapidly dump him and the very establishment types who had wanted him were left with no arguments for why he should not be drop-kicked.
These political hacks are all so dishonest and incompetent that they all accept each others's cliams of incompetence automatically and without consideration of whether the claims are to be believed or not, or of whether they should carry any penalty. Remember Hillary and her servers and "with a cloth?" comment? It's a beltway uni-party thing.
Do ANY of us TRULY want these sorts of people writng the rules for how any of use use tech? I personally want the government, including its politicians and their minions, to keep its mittens off of my activities as much as possible, and that goes for Manafort, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John (spearfished) Podesta, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Bernie Sanders, etc.
Do not tell the stupid-evil-and-corrupt political class and their crony friends how to better deceive the public!
egads! It's bad enough that half the people in the previous Administration were using email aliases to do their work so it would be impossible for the public to file FOIA requests to see what was going on (that includes both of Obama's AGs, the IRS officials using their agency to fight the TEA Party, several cabinet members, and Obama himself).
We're all better off, and corruption is easier to expose and fight and prosecute if the world's technically-competent people STOP telling all the minions and cronies who enable all the poltiticians how things actually work and how to better use them to hide corruption.
What's the matter with you???? I bet you even answer poltical polls, thinking this is a way for you to have a voice, when in reality all those polls actually do is help the politicians figure out better ways to lie to the public and manipulate voters. Your voice is only in the polling place on election day.
Dah Comrade. Sing it! Earn your rubles.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
First, none of these people ever worked in the White House or as part of the Executive Branch. They were campaign staff who were fired by Trump when he lost confidence in them.
Second, without the collusion angle there is no reason for a special prosecutor.
Third, where did "obama is a muslim" come from?
Just sayin.
Open source could have saved the day for this a-hole. But luckily for the rest of us he's an idiot.
How often do you think these guys do their own paper work? If it s legitimate, it goes through their clerical staff and all they ever see is a working draft for mark-up or the end product.
Scene: Home office, Manafort look-alike is typing on his computer. "Now how do I alter this spreadsheet? -- Gates will know". Overhead shot lets us see him starting to type an email. Cut to Mueller look-alike in a large office with an FBI logo on the wall. He is giving a high-five to other individuals wearing dark suits and sunglasses. Cut to Putin look-alike, saying "Need to alter a pdf? Get Adobe Acrobat Pro!"
Word 2013+ has built-in export PDF (Save As). Word 2016 opens PDF files for editing. Albeit the editing part is not entirely 100%.
You investigate and the guilty act guilty and run in a panic to cover everything up. More conspiracies form if they didn't already exist. The new mess of new crimes all has to be unraveled in the process. A minor rule violation or lesser crime involved in the primary investigation ends up as a huge distraction in the pursuit of the thing being investigated. GUILTY people do this and also innocent people who freak out over side issues that might come into view (could be as simple as attempting to hide an affair being disclosed which is completely unrelated to the investigation...)
It is not wrong to end up finding nothing went wrong or minor crimes instead of the primary purpose for the investigation but when everybody runs around in a panic and crimes are committed to PREVENT the investigation it is guilty and illegal as hell. Nobody knows if all that illegal activity is to obstruction of justice or simply unrelated or minor cover ups of tangential secrets. It's not like a warrant limiting a search, what they find can be referred for prosecution... it's an extremely powerful tool to dig at the truth. A jay walking stooge wanting to avoid a ticket could trade it for some useful information... It's how they take down organized crime, etc.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Oh that's right. Never mind. Those dumb asses are Micro$oft users.