Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Because He Couldn't Figure Out How to Convert PDFs to Word Files (slate.com) 189
There are two types of people in this world: those who know how to convert PDFs into Word documents and those who are indicted for money laundering. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is the second kind of person , Slate reports. From the report: Back in October, a grand jury indictment charged Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates with a variety of crimes, including conspiring "to defraud the United States." On Thursday, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a new indictment against the pair, substantially expanding the charges. As one former federal prosecutor told the Washington Post, Manafort and Gates' methods appear to have been "extensive and bold and greedy with a capital 'G,' but ... not all that sophisticated." One new detail from the indictment, however, points to just how unsophisticated Manafort seems to have been. Here's the relevant passage from the indictment. I've bolded the most important bits:
Manafort and Gates made numerous false and fraudulent representations to secure the loans. For example, Manafort provided the bank with doctored [profit and loss statements] for [Davis Manafort Inc.] for both 2015 and 2016, overstating its income by millions of dollars. The doctored 2015 DMI P&L submitted to Lender D was the same false statement previously submitted to Lender C, which overstated DMI's income by more than $4 million. The doctored 2016 DMI P&L was inflated by Manafort by more than $3.5 million. To create the false 2016 P&L, on or about October 21, 2016, Manafort emailed Gates a .pdf version of the real 2016 DMI P&L, which showed a loss of more than $600,000. Gates converted that .pdf into a "Word" document so that it could be edited, which Gates sent back to Manafort. Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 million in income. He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort. Manafort then sent the falsified 2016 DMI P&L .pdf to Lender D. So here's the essence of what went wrong for Manafort and Gates, according to Mueller's investigation: Manafort allegedly wanted to falsify his company's income, but he couldn't figure out how to edit the PDF.
Manafort and Gates made numerous false and fraudulent representations to secure the loans. For example, Manafort provided the bank with doctored [profit and loss statements] for [Davis Manafort Inc.] for both 2015 and 2016, overstating its income by millions of dollars. The doctored 2015 DMI P&L submitted to Lender D was the same false statement previously submitted to Lender C, which overstated DMI's income by more than $4 million. The doctored 2016 DMI P&L was inflated by Manafort by more than $3.5 million. To create the false 2016 P&L, on or about October 21, 2016, Manafort emailed Gates a .pdf version of the real 2016 DMI P&L, which showed a loss of more than $600,000. Gates converted that .pdf into a "Word" document so that it could be edited, which Gates sent back to Manafort. Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 million in income. He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort. Manafort then sent the falsified 2016 DMI P&L .pdf to Lender D. So here's the essence of what went wrong for Manafort and Gates, according to Mueller's investigation: Manafort allegedly wanted to falsify his company's income, but he couldn't figure out how to edit the PDF.
Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:5, Funny)
They are the BEST (Barely Educated Slow Thinkers)!
I donâ(TM)t know how either. (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m not slow. Indeed itâ(TM)s not a useful skill for one in a million people to have. So how does one do this?
Re:I donâ(TM)t know how either. (Score:4, Insightful)
Iâ(TM)m not slow. Indeed itâ(TM)s not a useful skill for one in a million people to have. So how does one do this?
you are correct:
This is a skill the majority of computer users do not need, and thus don't know how...
There is the concept of covering your tracks carefully, however, if planning on commission of a crime. My suggestion on "how to" is to simply buy acrobat professional for a few hundred dollars (if it's even available stand alone anymore?) if you're not computer savvy, this way you can edit PDFs to you hearts delight. This is an idea that simply googling "editing PDFs" would turn up, so... yeah, the guy that got busted didn't even do basic due diligence.
Re:Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:5, Funny)
Ain't
Goin'
Away
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True, Steven Hatfill can tell you all about his firsthand experience.
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I don't know how to do it either. And you know as well as I do 99.9% of other people don't know how to either.
Same way I don't know how to rebuild a car motor, or weld, or perform brain surgery, or apply makeup.
It's called job specialization and it is beneficial to us all for it allows us to excel in a particular area and sell our expertise to the highest bidder.
Sure Manafort was an idiot for perpetrating the scam, but not knowing how to alter a PDF is not anything for which to criticize anyone.
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Do not call yourself a "True Scotsman" until you've read about this 9/11-truther:
https://www.adl.org/blog/anti-semitic-911-conspiracy-theorists-thrive-15-years-after-attacks [adl.org]
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Every time I see someone say "every American must watch this," I know bullshit will follow. It's like telegraphing your mental instability in advance.
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Re:Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there are: Ben Carson, Rex Tillerson and Ajit Pai. Note, IQ above room temperature does not preclude insanity, apathy or corruption.
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The few people I know with exceptionally high IQs are absolute assholes. They don't brag about that IQ specifically, but they are elitist as hell.
Or, perhaps, they are just that much smarter than you that it comes of as elitist to you.
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Or, perhaps, they are just that much smarter than you that it comes of as elitist to you.
Exactly. I'm not conceded. I'm just aware that I'm better than you and realize that your input would be a waste of my time.
Humility is just one of an endless list of my remarkable qualities.
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Or, perhaps, they are just that much smarter than you that it comes of as elitist to you.
Exactly. I'm not conceded. I'm just aware that I'm better than you and realize that your input would be a waste of my time.
Humility is just one of an endless list of my remarkable qualities.
I think you must have been searching for "conceited" there, no?
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If someone is smarter/stronger/faster/etc they are your superior by definition. Egalitarianism is a myth.
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I know quite a few who aren't. Ie, Mensa preisdnets and such. Sure, some are assholes, but I don't see it as a higher proportion than those wth more average inteligences. Now I'm really smart (and hopefully not an asshole) and I've run across a few people who suprised me by how amazingly smarter they were from me, and all of them were very nice people.
Being an asshole is a dumb thing to be. It hurts job prospects, promotions, social interaction, relationships, and so forth.
Re:Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, it seems to me that among all the insanity in the White House, Tillerson is the adult actually *TRYING* to do his job.
Re: Nobody said these people were smart... (Score:1)
Manafort was never in the executive branch, either elected or as an appointee
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Don't you have to have an IQ of around 50 to even be able to stand and walk around or something? I think at room temperature IQ they're not really anything more than moaning blobs unable to do anything.
Or is it one of those Celsius-Fahrenheit-Kelvin things?
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50 Fahrenheit inside is cold, that means you have to put on a sweater to walk around the house. The common recommendation for thermostats is 68F.
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Celsius?
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Calories?
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Your use of degrees is kinda inappropriate in your first sentence because C is larger than F. I knew what you meant but...
Anyway, for me, F works better for cool to warm, C works better for cool to cold.
eg
-20 to -10 C is insanely cold
-10 to -5 C is absolutely freezing
- 5 to 0 C is freezing
0 to 10 C is cold
10 to 20 C is cool
Then we switch to F and it reads like your list.
Many Brits of my vintage think this way. Cultural quirk, I guess
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I know it's a flippant comment, but you can find the answer here [paulcooijmans.com]
Basically anyone with an IQ over about 20 can be taught simple tasks and can probably walk, although possibly not well because there are frequently motor control issues and physical deformities.
Smart people don't use Microsoft (Score:3)
Neither of these two people have worked for the US Executive branch.
But, according to TFA, Gates would've passed the "Can you convert PDF to MS Word" test, which you consider so vitally important to determining one's intelligence.
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Is there anybody with an IQ above room temperature still working in the US executive branch?
That depends on whether you mean celsius or Fahrenheit.
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IQ of 80 isn't exactly going to impress.
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Is there anybody with an IQ above room temperature still working in the US executive branch?
Room temp in Kelvin, Fahrenheit, or Celsius? Actually, never mind, no to all three.
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Is there anybody with an IQ above room temperature still working in the US executive branch?
Are you using Fahrenheit or celsius?
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Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin or Rankine?
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Although I'm being snarky; I fully expect this meme to become featured on 4chan soon.
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The Democrats (not the left) is very inept. Most political parties are. They played the electoral college game badly, even though they won the majority of the vote, and they didn't campaign in the "sure thing" states (they did fundraise there), etc. The big advantage of Republicans is that they tend to be a bit more organized when it's time for compaigning and they're very effective at getting out the vote. But both are complete screwups at times that regularly shoot themselves in the foot. All of the part
LibreOffice! (Score:3, Insightful)
Never heard of it. (Score:2)
Open source could have saved the day for this a-hole. But luckily for the rest of us he's an idiot.
How often do you think these guys do their own paper work? If it s legitimate, it goes through their clerical staff and all they ever see is a working draft for mark-up or the end product.
Garden Variety White Collar Crime (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sees no "Russians" required.
Re:Garden Variety White Collar Crime (Score:5, Informative)
Sees no "Russians" required.
Who needs Russians when you can work with a Russia-aligned former Ukrainian president. You know, that country that Russia invaded?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/politics/paul-manafort-new-charges-mueller.html [nytimes.com]
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You are aware that a large part of the crime that they're accused of - and of which Gates is now pleading guilty - involves their work on behalf of a then Russian client state, do you not?
trump can't pay $200 /year for adobe pro? (Score:2)
trump can't pay $200 /year for adobe pro?
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Dude, Microsoft Word has been able to save PDF to DOCX and back for years.
the real story: (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:this is a laughably easy conversion to make (Score:5, Funny)
(one hundred twenty-three steps)
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Lotus 1-2-3
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Re: this is a laughably easy conversion to make (Score:2)
Load pdf in Adobe. Convert to or save as doc. If your version of Adobe doesn't have that bust out the credit card and upgrade it.
Edit resulting word doc. Save as PDF.
It would be laughable except I do it every friggin day. One of our vendors sends his invoices as jpg's snapped from His phone.
I convert to PDF save as word, clean up the data, as as shiny PDF before forwarding to idiots I mean AP
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Worst I ever saw was something that was originally in Word, printed on an inkjet and then faxed to us.
The problem is that it didn't stop there. Our secretary had the job of keeping digital copies of what the fax received, and she "saved space" by saving the received faxes in medium-quality JPEGs.
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I just tried this in Adobe and it wouldn't even load the PDF. I was using Adobe Audition 10, do I need 11?
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He meant Acrobat of course.
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Load pdf in Adobe. Convert to or save as doc. If your version of Adobe doesn't have that bust out the credit card and upgrade it.
If you're planing to use it to commit fraud to the tune of several million dollars you may as well pirate the software.
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Load pdf in Adobe. Convert to or save as doc. If your version of Adobe doesn't have that bust out the credit card and upgrade it.
If you're planing to use it to commit fraud to the tune of several million dollars you may as well pirate the software.
So, you're suggesting that he should have risked the ire of the IRS *and* the BSA? I mean, one or the other you might be able to fend off, but both?!
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Their mistake wasn't using Word/PDF, their mistake was that they left an electronic paper trail by exchanging emails of their fraud.
Pretty much the same thing that brought down Hillary.
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step 6: realize this is about as productive as feeding a toddler into a wood chipper
*turns on recording device*
Tell me, what experience do you have that makes you say that?
Right click, (Score:2)
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Not if the pdf is based on a image (ie. pdf)
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Acrobat has built-in OCR features IIRC.
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The guy recommend opening in Word. I know my version of Word doesn't have OCR. You can open a PDF but if it is image based, Word will display the document as an image.
Be grateful. Be VERY grateful. (Score:3, Insightful)
At least the toddler-in-chief didn't hire SMART criminals.
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Alternatively, the smart criminals are using the dumb criminals to absorb all the vitriol, news attention, law enforcement and special council resources.
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Does he need it? (Score:2)
This is How Stupid People Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear the intelligent evil people. The stupid ones do this kind of stuff.
Even Ross Ulbricht (Sik Road pioneer and jail bird) got caught in part because he asked about a techy problem on on a techy forum using his own name, while developing the code.
When I consider how to get away with crimes, the primary thing is working out how to break any link between yourself and your actions and between yourself and the victims. The secondary thing is to leave no trace in your personal effects. My legit job seems like a far better deal though.
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If not for the fact that you are using 'words' and not Twitter, I would have been sure that you were Trump.
Re:This is How Stupid People Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think about this kind of thing anytime I read about a crime committed for profit. I could see it maybe being worth the effort and associated risk if the payoff was never having to work again. But most of the time people are committing crimes over what amounts to paltry sums of money. In 2006 the average bank robbery in the US only got about $4300, and the numbers are even worse for other types of robberies. If I wanted to get any where close to what I'd consider a tolerable living I'd have to rob a bank every month. And even with the FBI only ID'ing 50% of bank robbers the odds of getting caught just aren't worth it by any stretch.
Even if you got away with a massive haul of money the question then becomes how do you make it useful without getting caught. There is a reason organized crime always gets into money laundering. They end up with so much cash they can't legally explain earning, that they end up spending large parts of it cleaning the cash.
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A big problem in my mind is what country to abscond to with so much cash? You need to first get the money there, cash gets pretty heavy and bulky when you start talking about hundreds of thousands and up. Then you need to get the money into a bank that isn't going to care where it came from. In a lot of countries even getting that money into a bank isn't going to keep it safe, let alone your person. Much of Central and South America is the territory of cartels that have diversified into kidnapping, for exam
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>Ross Ulbricht
You mean the guy they gave immunity to, or the guy they gave immunity to? You forgot the one important thing, none of them ever go to jail.
And if Hill-dog did nothing wrong (God, we're still talking about it...), why did everyone around her get immunity deals?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
http://www.washingtonexaminer.... [washingtonexaminer.com]
https://www.politico.com/story... [politico.com]
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It's all out in the open. Ross didn't fuck up only once he did it once and then again and then again...
Then he got caught with his notebook computer (used in a public space!) open with and logged in as administrator. Stupid.
And then he was given the chance, even encouraged, to take ownership of the server in order to argue for its exclusion as evidence. This wouldn't be a disadvantage in the real trial either - as explained by the court and his lawyers. Stupid. Potentially lifetime before freedom stupid.
He
Misleading headline (Score:2)
FTFA: He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the “Word” document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort.
His issue is he didn't know how to convert .doc to .pdf.
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FTFA: He first sent the original PDF to Gates to convert it to a .doc in the first place.
So.. how would one do this? (Score:1)
Asking for a friend
So... what's the best sex doll? (Score:2)
Also asking for a friend.
Should have hired a teenager or other (Score:3, Funny)
Two possible ways to go here:
1) Hire teenager, who for dirt cheap has the time to sail the rocky shoals of PDF and DOC standards to do what you want, is way too disorganized for investigators to find anything. Cost: $200 and a few illegal beer runs. Downside: May take several passes to correct grammar.
2) Hire Russian (to be more specific, Ukrainian) hacker to simply re-work the original PDF Postscript into what you want. When the investigators come knocking do you think they will be able to find the Russian hacker to get original documents? No. Cost: $50k, delivered in ETH please, and dead drops of USB sticks in place of meetings. Downside: All USB sticks you get back will be laden with latest viruses that will track you while you shower.
hire personal it personal assistant is a must (Score:1)
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Double-Entry Bookkeeping (Score:1)
That is why you keep two sets of books. One for the tax man, showing a loss. And one for the banks, showing a profit.
That's why it's called double-entry bookkeeping.
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Excellent trolling/joking! Terrible accounting.
There was more (Score:1)
There was a lot more, but this is what is being used for charging evidence.
Oh, and, yes, we still have your cloud data.
Trump: I will surround myself... (Score:2)
with the best of the best!
Translation: I will surround myself with ninnies and nincompoops!!!!
Nonsensical claim about converting PDF to World (Score:2)
It's retaining distinct copies of a document before, and after, adding fraudulent content that trapped the man. Simply discarding previous, fraudulent versions of the document would have cleared the paper trail. Worse for careless criminals: Word documents normally retain some local history of changes on the author's computer, and are far more dangerous in terms of tracking when someone added fraudulent content. PDF is _much_ safer.
PDF is not as user-familiar, and the better What You See is What You Get edi
Headline wrong... (Score:2)
Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 million in income. He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a .pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort.
Manafort didn't know how to turn a word document into a PDF, not the reverse as the headline claims.
Seriously, don't the editors even read the submissions?
The Adobe Acrobat Pro ads just write themselves (Score:2)
What version of Word was he using?! (Score:1)
Word 2013+ has built-in export PDF (Save As). Word 2016 opens PDF files for editing. Albeit the editing part is not entirely 100%.
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No real evidence of Russian Collusion by the Trump campaign....
Which was the basis for the Special Prosecutor.
No one seems to care how far off the rails this investigation is going...
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FFS, can you for once get off the "no collusion", " but what about her emails", "obama is a muslim" train and see that these are the people that YOUR president dealt with on a daily basis, hired, and defended on his campaign and presidency? The fact that there is an investigation where two people have pleaded guilty to Federal crimes in which they were dealing with Russian entities doesn't bother you one bit because you are too busy being a trumpkin apologist dosn't bother you one bit?
We KNOW how far off th
FFS, read your own post (Score:2)
First, none of these people ever worked in the White House or as part of the Executive Branch. They were campaign staff who were fired by Trump when he lost confidence in them.
Second, without the collusion angle there is no reason for a special prosecutor.
Third, where did "obama is a muslim" come from?
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Re:Fake news (Score:4, Informative)
Aside from top Trump campaign officials being caught meeting a Russian government agent, then denying having met, and when faced with clear evidence one person present admitting that they were there to be given dirt on the opponent - but still insisting it doesn't count because the dirt was poor.
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For reasons other than collusion ....
This is just a fishing expedition, designed to remove an elected president. Russians would be proud.
Using biased FBI civil servants. All documented Dems except ONE.
Using FAKE FISA warrants obtained using a collection of FAKE data bought by Hillary. Lied to a judge to get that "insurance policy" going.
Meanwhile Comey signs off on those warrants (illegally) and laughs .... the Russians are very happy.
WRONG. that is not how it works (Score:2)
You investigate and the guilty act guilty and run in a panic to cover everything up. More conspiracies form if they didn't already exist. The new mess of new crimes all has to be unraveled in the process. A minor rule violation or lesser crime involved in the primary investigation ends up as a huge distraction in the pursuit of the thing being investigated. GUILTY people do this and also innocent people who freak out over side issues that might come into view (could be as simple as attempting to hide an
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Yup, target rich environment. Well, target rich for the IG. Which is why a shitload of the people involved in the investigation are being demoted, reassigned, or outright quitting.
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Dah Comrade. Sing it! Earn your rubles.