Michael Mancil Brown, Wire Fraud, Tennessee 2012

Michael Mancil Brown, a 37-year-old Franklin, Tennessee resident, has been found guilty of participating in an extortion and wire fraud scheme involving former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

A federal jury delivered the verdict in Nashville, Tennessee, and Brown now faces serious consequences for his actions.

According to testimony at trial, evidence recovered from a computer seized from Brown’s home in 2012 implicated him in a scheme to defraud Romney, the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and others by falsely claiming that he had gained access to the PricewaterhouseCoopers internal computer network and had stolen tax documents for Romney and his wife, Ann D. Romney, for tax years prior to 2010.

Brown was found guilty of participating in the scheme in which a letter delivered in August 2012 to the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Franklin demanded that $1 million worth of the digital currency Bitcoin be deposited to a specific Bitcoin account to prevent the release of the purportedly stolen Romney tax returns.

The letter also invited interested parties who wanted the allegedly stolen Romney tax documents to be released to contribute $1 million to another Bitcoin account.

Similar letters were delivered to the offices of the Democratic and Republican parties in Franklin, causing similar statements to be posted to Pastebin.com.

A sentencing hearing will be scheduled for a date likely in August, and Brown faces up to twenty years in prison on the charges of wire fraud, up to five years in prison on the charges of extortion, fines of up to $250,000, and orders of restitution to victims.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service’s Nashville Field Office with assistance from the FBI’s Nashville Division. The case is being prosecuted by U.S. Department of Justice Senior Counsel Anthony V. Teelucksingh and Assistant U.S. Attorney Byron Jones of the Middle District of Tennessee.

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