A mysterious group of blackmailers claims to be holding Mitt Romney's tax returns hostage. They say they stole the tax returns on August 25, and will make the information in the tax returns public on September 28th if they are not paid one million dollars ... in Bitcoins.
Thumb drives supposedly containing encrypted copies of the returns have been delivered to the headquarters of both the Republican and Democratic parties in Williamson County, Tenn.
The Secret Service is investigating.
At this point, I should stop and say that this is not an Onion article or snark. This is actually happening. (Maybe.)
The group claims to have obtained the returns from a Price Waterhouse office in Franklin, Tenn. last month. They described their Ocean's 11-style caper as follows:
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.
So far the only concrete proof of any of this is the fact that someone really did send thumb drives to the Democratic and GOP county offices. But as yet no one has worked up the nerve to look at the thumb drives, for fear of infecting their machines with a million computer STDs.
The whole experience has been so baffling that it resulted in the following hilariously off-message quote from the head of the local GOP office:
In an interview with The Tennessean, the executive director of the Williamson County Republican Party said she also initially thought to treat the matter as a hoax.
“A million dollars seemed kind of low,” Jean Barwick told the paper. “If you’re going to go for a million, why not go for $100 million.”
Er, I think the GOP is supposed to say that there's
absolutely nothing of interest in the returns, not that the blackmailers
underestimated the amount of damning information in the files.
The stunt is also delightful because the blackmailers asked to be paid in Bitcoins -- an online currency beloved by goldbugs and Randites. They believe a pretend currency created by pretend-mining "bitcoins" from pretend-reserves by means of fancy math is superior to using government-backed fiat money because ... because ... because, shut up, it just is, is all. (To the rest of the world, Bitcoins are best known for its hacking scandals and periodic collapses of its value.)
In the brief moments between now and when the Secret Service breaks the case, let's contemplate some possible scenarios. So put on your tinfoil hats, light up your cigarettes, and step with me into the shadows of conspiracy.
Conspiracy Theory 1: This is punishment for Romney being a RINO. In this take, rabid libertarians are so fed up with Mitt's lack of ideological purity that they punish him by forcing him to underwrite their favorite form of currency.
Conspiracy Theory 2A: The Romney Campaign is behind all this. In this version, the Romney campaign figures the returns will eventually leak anyway So why not leak it using a complex, overly elaborate caper to build sympathy for the "blackmail victum?" What could possibly go wrong?
Conspiracy Theory 2B: The Romney Campaign is behind all this, cooked books edition. In this variant, the Romney campaign leaks the returns ... and the returns reveal the shocking secret that Romney paid too much taxes, because he's just that generous of a guy. Plus, he's actually 20 years younger and two inches taller than Wikipedia says he is!
Conspiracy Theory 3: This is all a prank by some drunken college students. .... Well, yeah, naturally this will turn out to be the real explanation. But until the Secret Service drags the hung-over 20-year-olds out in front of the cameras, we can still dream!