Notorious fraudster William Rivers Pitt has posted yet another false "scoop" at the Democratic Underground. No, nothing yet about Karl Rove being indicted. That was guaranteed in his May 2006 "scoop" and we are still waiting 24 business hours for this mythical event to materialize. This time around Pitt posted a "scoop" about TurboTax supposedly being hacked. One little problem; it wasn't true. And a TurboTax spokesperson even posted on Pitt's thread about the truth of the matter due to the misinformation spread on the Web by Pitt's veracity challenged "scoop."
One fringe benefit is that Pitt has once again turned himself into a laughingstock and provided a great deal of mirth both to outsiders as well as among his fellow DUers. We shall take a look at Pitt's public mocking on DU but first here is the false, I repeat, false scoop that Pitt carelessly posted:
:
"Scary stuff" UPDATE: the hack was TurboTax (NEWER UPDATE)
...but my source tells me as many as 15 other states could have been affected, and that whoever pulled this hack likely got the run of all of TurboTax's information. That might even mean Quickbooks, but I don't know.
Millions of people have been using TurboTax for years. I used it for years. It's a treasure trove of incredibly detailed tax and financial information...now in the wind.
It's a bad one, in my opinion.
Actually Pitt, TurboTax was NOT hacked and here is the post by Christine Morrison of TurboTax Communications to correct the false information spread by Mr. Anger Management:
TurboTax has not been hacked
Hi Folks,
Christine from TurboTax here. I want to assure you that TurboTax has not been hacked. We continuously monitor our systems in search of suspicious activity. And through that process, we have found no evidence of a data breach. In addition, we asked a third-party security firm – FireEye/Mandiant – to do an independent assessment. All evidence indicates that those initiating these attacks obtained information outside the tax filing process.During this tax season, we have seen a significant increase in attempts by criminals to use stolen identity information such as names and social security numbers obtained from other sources outside the tax preparation process to file fraudulent state tax returns. This illegal activity originates outside the tax preparation process and uses TurboTax as the vehicle to commit this crime.
We will have more information coming on this issue, but I wanted to assure you that our customer's data is safe.
If you've been a victim of identity theft, we've established a dedicated 800 number where customers impacted by tax fraud can obtain further information with serially trained identity protection agents.
-Christine Morrison
TurboTax Communications
Soon after Christine Morrison's correction of Pitt's misinformation was posted, the DUers began the vicious mockery of the one with the track record of false scoops. I would like to post their attacks upon Pitt but I prefer to take the high road and will refrain exposing you to this. ...Ah! Who am I kidding? Of course you can see a sampling of DU anger directed at Pitt:
I'm guessing your other "sources" relied on your "guy" as well. Maybe you were their source. Whatevs. That's not second-sourcing, that's cluster****ing.
Still waiting on my Rove indictment here. It's not a sin to be wrong, or for a source to have been wrong, nor for the real story to become more complicated as time goes on. It's early yet.
Recommendation to you Will, since the article has now been edited and a person from TT has posted though of course anyone could say they were that, it might behoove you to edit your OP since it appears you may be spreading false rumor of TT being hacked.
Pitt irresponsibly is insisting they were with zero proof. And, oh, hey, Karl Rove was totally indicted!!!
Yeah, well now, are you going to change the title of your OP telling lies? Have you learned that fraud does not equal hacking yet?
You can see a larger chronicle of Pitt's foibles at the DUmmie FUnnies.
p.s. For those of you wondering what happened to Pitt's partner in fraudulent scoops, Jason Leopold, as of 2009 he was the U.S. correspondent for a New Zealand college radio station located in a student union in Auckland.
