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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.
The BEST people! The BEST!
They are the BEST (Barely Educated Slow Thinkers)!
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.
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
Mueller
Ain't
Goin'
Away