A hacker who claimed he stole Mitt Romney’s tax returns and threatened to release them ahead of the 2012 election was sentenced this week to four years in prison.
{mosads}Michael Mancil Brown, 37, was convicted in May of extortion and wire fraud after prosecutors said he falsely claimed that he stole Romney’s tax returns from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. In an August 2012 letter, Brown demanded $1 million in the digital currency Bitcoin in exchange for the purported records.
The extortion attempt was investigated by the Secret Service and FBI. Brown was found guilty after a trial on six counts of wire fraud and six counts of using interstate commerce facilities to commit extortion.
The court sentenced Brown on Monday to 48 months in prison, and ordered him to pay a restitution of $201,836 to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Romney’s tax returns became an issue in the 2012 race with Democrats pressuring him to release more information on his personal finance.
Romney initially released two years of returns with summarized information for previous years. He eventually released his full returns in September of 2012.