A Tennessee man has been sentenced to four years in prison for claiming that he hacked into a computer to get the tax returns of former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Michael Mancil Brown, 37, of Franklin was convicted in May on fraud charges. He sent a letter in 2012 to the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers claiming that he had gotten access to its computer network and had stolen three years’ worth of tax documents for Romney and also for Romney's wife, Ann.
Brown demanded that the firm deposit $1 million worth of bitcoins into an account to prevent him from releasing the tax documents he claimed to have.
Late Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Billy Roy Wilson sentenced Brown to 48 months in prison and ordered him to pay about $200,000 in restitution to the accounting firm.
