The Tennessee man allegedly tried to get $1 million from Mitt Romney. Man charged with Mitt extortion try

A Tennessee man was charged Wednesday with attempting to extort money from former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, an accounting firm and others by claiming he had copies of Romney’s tax returns.

Michael Mancil Brown, 34, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Nashville on six counts of wire fraud and six counts of extortion, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.


According to the DOJ, Brown allegedly tried to get $1 million from the former Massachusetts governor and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, claiming he had stolen the Romneys’ pre-2010 tax information by accessing the company’s computer network.

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Brown did not actually have the documents, the DOJ said.

Brown allegedly in a letter to the firm demanded $1 million in Bitcoin, a digital currency, or he would release the returns. People who wanted the documents were asked to donate to a separate Bitcoin account, the indictment states.

Similar letters were sent to the Democratic and Republican parties in Franklin, Tenn., the indictment says, and Brown allegedly also posted to the sharing site Pastebin.com. Those statements on Pastebin said party officials were sent flash drives containing the information.

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“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,” the Pastebin cover letter said, POLITICO reported in September.

At the time, PricewaterhouseCoopers put out a statement that there was no evidence its system had been accessed, and local officials said none of them opened the packages sent to their offices.

The Secret Service investigated the incident with help from the FBI.