Topic: Romney's tax returns - first Bitcoin extortion? (Read 33960 times)

"now pay your taxes using bitcoins in the state of ohio"

https://snapperbuzz.com/breaking-the-internet-bitcoins-can-now-pay-your-taxes-ohio-becomes-first-state-to-accept-bitcoins-for-tax-bills/



In a move which has surprised many, Ohio became the first state to accept Bitcoins for citizen’s payable taxes. To some, it has been long overdue seeing the success and the frenzy it created in the couple of years. This also indicates that States are now looking at Blockchain & Bitcoin as positive step towards revolutionising the taxation system.
Though the same in not currently open for the individual filer as shall operate for businesses based in the Ohio State, the move can still be seen as very positive and as reported by the Wall Street Journal, it’s only matter of time when the same opens for everyone including the individual filers who wish to pay their taxes through Bitcoins.

 

JOSH MANDEL: A REVOLUTIONARY TREASURER

Josh Mandel, the man behind this initiative has already established that the state’s coffers has minimal exposure to the notoriously unstable electronic currency and that’s the reason why the money paid in Bitcoin to Ohio shall instantly be converted into US dollars through exchange BitPay.


It is important to mention that Ohio is not the only state where an initiative like this was taken but as Mr. Josh Mandel is directly elected he doesn’t need to get formal approval from the state legislature or governor – something that has stopped a number of other efforts to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment in states including Arizona, Georgia and Illinois.

This is an exclusive contract between the state and Bitpay whereby, as reported by The Register (UK)

“BitPay has promised to eat any currency variations and following a three-month “introductory period” in which it won’t charge anything, BitPay will charge a 1 per cent transaction fee. Mandel points out this commission is significantly less than the 2.5 per cent fee credit card companies charge (although pretty much every financial adviser in the world suggests that pay taxes with a credit card is a terrible idea).”
A BRIEF CRITICAL OPINION

Now, another twist to this is that there’s a high possibility that this might not continue for a very long time if the initiative is not backed by others when the Mr. Mandel leaves office as this is his penultimate year of tenure and is scheduled to end in 2019. There has also been a precedent to the same as it has already been noticed that Delaware, known for it’s innovational ways to attract business was also pushing Blockchain Technology for corporations (reported by The Register) but that effort also faded away as soon as the Governor Mr. Jack Markell left office.

That sure is a pattern  

He probably had the encrypted passwords saved on his computer that were seized.

BTW, I think this guy is 100% innocent.  The only fraudsters in bitcoin land use Bootstrap for website design, yet this guy used Joomla.

Wait till you get a look at his getaway vehicle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eNdU9QQZUk

This doesn't make much sense to me. I suspect we don't have all relevant information yet ;>

Too bad he's not taking bitcoin donations

What I find interesting about this case is that the search warrant specifically identified Bitcoin and two specific Bitcoin addresses among the items to be seized. Is this a first?

If this guy has over 370,000 BTC why on earth is he asking for financial donations?

I hope he backed up his 371,000BTC well before the secret service took it!!!!

EDIT -- oh wait, supposedly he donated it all to others?


That whole story sounds fishy, WTF.


-p

Looks like this is a little nuts...


http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/11/09/110912-news-romney-tax-raid/
http://mbdonationfund.com/

-p

evidently it is this guy.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/anyone-know-what-happened-to-knightmb-and-his-371000-btc-6825
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30632&sid=bc2ba1be6bb99fef8c9941ef67f4b5b3
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/cats-lead-feds-to-knightmb-worth-371kbtc-in-romney-tax-hack-123591

Did anyone notice that they have apparently found the person who tried to pull this fraud?

I just saw this on Cryptome:

http://cryptome.org/2012/11/romney-tax-plot.pdf


Search Warrant for Michael Mancil Brown. They want a DNA sample. They've got IP addresses from Pastebin and from some newspaper in Tennessee.

Check it.

-p

The rickroll was predicted before it happened.

Indeed - sad that they really couldn't come up with something better than a lame RickRoll.

Turns out to be a giant RickRoll. I'm glad that the internet is getting to the point where we are almost consuming our culture almost as fast as it is being created, and investigating things until they're completely exposed.

My antivirus goes crazy about some JavaScript thing on that octsurprise page...

http://politicker.com/2012/10/meet-two-of-the-developers-behind-the-internet-october-surprise/

Looks like it is probably the same guy (based on his "preview" of "document 3").  Don't know how he thinks that he can prove that they are genuine...even I can photoshop a tax document and I have very little in photo editing skills.

http://octsurprise.com/
https://twitter.com/OctSurprise

Related?

But no forms to explain the millions of deductions.  LOL.

Did you know you too can "release" his taxes with nothing more than pdf software?

not sure.. some did release 2008 tax returns