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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.
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.
At least the toddler-in-chief didn't hire SMART criminals.
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.
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
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.
The guy recommend opening in Word. I know my version of Word doesn't have OCR. You can open a PDF but if it is image based, Word will display the document as an image.
FTFA: He first sent the original PDF to Gates to convert it to a .doc in the first place.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Sees no "Russians" required.
Who needs Russians when you can work with a Russia-aligned former Ukrainian president. You know, that country that Russia invaded?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/politics/paul-manafort-new-charges-mueller.html
This sig is false.
FFS, can you for once get off the "no collusion", " but what about her emails", "obama is a muslim" train and see that these are the people that YOUR president dealt with on a daily basis, hired, and defended on his campaign and presidency? The fact that there is an investigation where two people have pleaded guilty to Federal crimes in which they were dealing with Russian entities doesn't bother you one bit because you are too busy being a trumpkin apologist dosn't bother you one bit?
We KNOW how far off the rails this investigation is going and we are glad it is seeping into every direction it needs to go to weed out all these corrupt people in the white house and beyond. But wait you don't care...political party before country. Yes, I see how you voted. nice try.
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?
you are correct:
This is a skill the majority of computer users do not need, and thus don't know how...
There is the concept of covering your tracks carefully, however, if planning on commission of a crime. My suggestion on "how to" is to simply buy acrobat professional for a few hundred dollars (if it's even available stand alone anymore?) if you're not computer savvy, this way you can edit PDFs to you hearts delight. This is an idea that simply googling "editing PDFs" would turn up, so... yeah, the guy that got busted didn't even do basic due diligence.
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Aside from top Trump campaign officials being caught meeting a Russian government agent, then denying having met, and when faced with clear evidence one person present admitting that they were there to be given dirt on the opponent - but still insisting it doesn't count because the dirt was poor.