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Update 5:37 p.m. PwC has come out with a statement regarding the hacking. There's still no mention on their end if the hackers are credible, nor did they elaborate on whether or not it was possible for someone to, as the hackers say they did, physically set up shop on the second floor of their office. But they do say that there's no evidence of the hack and that they have alerted authorities:

We are aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.

With all this bad grammar and bit coinage and whatnot floating about, we took another look at Reddit where users are far more fluent in "crackers", hacking and ASCII things than we are. And one theory floating around is that the threats could be coming from two different sources. "There were two releases. I would say that the bitcoin part may be just someone trying to get free bitcoins and is not the work of the original cracker. But I could be wrong," writes redditor Jlbraun. He adds:

Both of the verification keyphrases (presumably written on the packages so the receiver can verify the pastebin releases are from the crackers) are from Mormon speeches or writings: 1.all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty This is added in the second pastebin. If this is on another package received by either the DNC or the RNC, then the Bitcoin demand is real. If not, it's fake: 2.he moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father

Update 4:10 p.m.: Well this is interesting. The group that claims to have stolen Mitt Romney's tax returns sent a hard drive and a letter to the local Republican party headquarters and Nashville City Paper's Ken Whitehouse has seen them:

Both the Democratic and Republican party offices in Williamson County received a letter and a flash drive last week allegedly containing the stolen tax records of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Secret Service agents confiscated the drives on Wednesday morning.

No we can't explain why Franklin, Tenn., is the epicenter of this hacking story. Whitehouse describes what he saw before the Secret Service arrived.

A representative from The City Paper has seen both the letter and the drive, but GOP officials would not allow them to be photographed. Jean Barwick, the county Republican Party executive director, said that an envelope was found at the front door of their headquarters on main street in Franklin on Friday. The envelope was crudely addressed to Republican officials with the name of the party misspelled.

And apparently Williamson County Democratic Chairman Peter Burr, told Whitehouse that they received a similar note and hard-drive, and thought nothing of it. "We opened it and found a typewritten sheet of paper. I almost threw it out. The only thing missing was a Nigerian prince," Burr told Whitehouse. "It seems like it's someone looking for some gullible fool, but who knows?"

So far, PwC haven't returned Whitehouse's calls, though he does mention that someone in the Romney camp does know about the claims and that authorities have been alerted and are investigating. And then there's this bit from the letter, in which the group describes how they supposedly got acccess to the Romney returns:

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.

None of the new information proves that Romney's returns have in fact been stolen. But they would suggest that if this is a hoax, it's an increasingly elaborate one.