The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (17 page)

Is Eric nuts? De Payne and Mitnick have just made certain that
L.A.'s two biggest newspapers have broadcast his height, weight,
hair colors, haunts, and aliases to hundreds of thousands of Los An-
gelinos. L.A. is the last place Eric should be.

"Do you miss the Hollywood scene?"

"I'm just really hoping that this is going to blow over."

But the wind isn't blowing in his direction. Eric Heinz, Agent
Steal, or Justin Petersen — take your pick — is suddenly a cyber-
celebrity, a notorious rogue, and the FBI, which so far hasn't made
much of an effort to hunt Eric, now has a very good reason to cap-
ture their man in the computer underground. Eric has become a pub-
lic liability for the Bureau, and the only way to clean up the FBI
operation gone sour is to put Eric behind bars.

"I think the whole thing with De Payne pushing this story is ridic-
ulous," Eric fumes. "He's making all this smoke so the government
might say, 'We don't want to fuck with that can of worms.' Then
again it might piss them off and blow up in his face."

"Don't you think De Payne and Mitnick figure it's hacker jus-
tice?" I venture. "You messed with them. They mess back."

"I was just doing my job. Perhaps you should explain it to them. It
really wasn't anything personal. I was hired, and I did my job. But
you know, that's the mentality of a typical hacker."

"Mitnick seems to think the FBI entrapped him," I offer.

"Well, he's guilty," Eric snaps. "We didn't entrap him. I think
he's into hacking. I think he wants to know information."

Not money? Not crime? Just information. Is Eric right? Is this the
real reason the FBI considers Mitnick dangerous?

"He may not have been doing anything at the time that we called
him," Eric continues, unwittingly making a possible argument for
entrapment. "But as soon as Mitnick knew that I had something that
he wanted, they [Mitnick and De Payne] were all over me. They
wanted to share information.

"What really blows me away is how does the FBI
know
what
Mitnick is doing?" Eric wonders. "When the Bureau came to me, I
asked the agents, 'What's Mitnick been doing?' [They said,] 'We
don't want to talk about it, but we're pretty sure he's been up to
something.'

"You know,
how
do they
know?
" Eric asks me.

It's an intriguing question. I've looked at the court records and
they give no hint of any legal investigation by the FBI or Pacific Bell
before they sent Eric undercover in late 1991. Did the FBI really
know Mitnick was hacking in the fall of 1991, a full year before his
probation was finished? Or did they just assume Mitnick would be
unable to resist their temptations?

"Is it the analogy that De Payne gave?" Eric continues. "That
once somebody has the key to everything, every time something is
opened they think it's the person who has the keys?"

Suddenly, police sirens scream on Eric's end. "Hold on a second!"
Eric orders.

"Is there a problem?" I ask nervously.

But Eric's cool. He knows cop stuff. He doesn't respond for sev-
eral seconds. "Nope. I don't think they're going to come and get me
on a code three."

I don't know what a code three is, but Eric isn't the slightest bit
worried.

"Hey, there are trailer people living in this parking lot," he re-
marks with amusement, the sirens sounding like the cops are closing
in. Eric is in a philosophical frame of mind.

"The Bureau really pissed me off. They weren't very thorough.
They were very slow at doing things.

"In a lot of ways I feel like the victim," Eric laments. "The govern-
ment didn't give me the protection to stay clear of Mitnick that I
asked for. Therefore, Mitnick found out who I was and he fucked up
my benefits.

"When I got thrown out of the Oakwoods after eight months of
living there, the government gave me one week's notice. That's it!
One week's notice!"

Eric jokes about his surroundings. "I'm in one of those parking lots
you have to pay to sit in, and this guy's cleaning it up and turning the
lights off. I just offered him a beer."

Eric's pulled a chair up to the pay phone and made himself com-
fortable. He sounds slightly tipsy. He's talking about how the FBI
outfitted him for his undercover Mitnick mission.

"The FBI gave me two computers, two phone lines, two modems,
a cell phone, a pager, a test set, and recording equipment. They gave
me a Nagra miniature tape recorder. They had these special tapes,
and these wires that you put on your chest, the classic tape recorder
that FBI informants wear.

" 'This is yours, keep it,' they told me. I taped it into a void in my
leg and to my chest. Being a sound engineer, I modified it. I put the
microphones on my shoulders. That way, when I was at a loud
bar, when someone was yelling into my ear, I'd pick it up on my
shoulder."

"We had Mitnick admitting to using SAS and cell phone
fraud. He said his phone was chipped [cloned]. Lewis was very
proud to rub it in my face that just by me barely mentioning SAS he
was able to completely access it and get all the information on it."

Eric pauses and then reflects on the dangerous opportunity that he

and the FBI created. "I'd really hate to see some other hackers get
ahold of that stuff."

■ * ■

"I'm asking your personal advice," Eric demands in a serious tone.
"Would it do me any good to make it clear to all the newspapers out
there that if my picture gets published it will cost them money?"

"No," I respond without thinking.

"I'm saying this as a
threat,"
Eric continues. "In other words, I
will
fuck
with them. Do you think that would stop them from print-
ing my picture?"

"It would probably get your picture on the front page."

"It obviously hasn't worked with Mitnick," Eric concurs. "He's
fucked with everybody and he's still getting his picture published."

Suddenly Eric's tone mellows. "I'm very safe right now, but I do
eventually want to get back to having a life. I can put it on hold for a
while, maybe a year. I have money now."

No wonder Eric's in such a friendly mood.

"How'd you get money?"

"I don't want to talk about it. It was necessary. I have to do these
things to stay free. That's one of the biggest hurdles that a fugitive
has, not having enough money to do the things you need to do."

At this time I have no idea whether Eric is bullshitting me or not.
But five weeks later I will learn that at the time of our August conver-
sation he was in the final stages of hacking into a Southern Califor-
nia bank and electronically transferring $150,000. And he did move
the money.

■
■
■

"It's starting to rain," Eric announces.

"It doesn't rain down there," I remind him.

"Maybe I'm not down here," Eric teases.

"Now I know you're somewhere in the country where it's rain-
ing.

"Yeah," Eric mutters.

"There are probably only one or two places in the country where
it's raining," I continue.

"You've got like three minutes," Eric warns. "My sunroof's open
and it's raining."

"Hey, remember you mentioned you would try to send a copy of
your memoirs?" I quicky add. "The part the FBI didn't confiscate?"

It's 4:40 a.m. We've been talking more than four hours. Now that
he's in the money, Eric's feeling magnanimous. He's stopped asking
to be paid for his story; he's happy to keep chatting.

"Yeah," Eric says before hanging up. "I'll see what I can do."

Five days later, a big file bobs up in my Well account. Eighty pages of
Eric's life of kinky sex and crime.

Data Thief

one of America's top computer hackers reveals all.

I download the file and read about Eric's self-described addiction to
sex, his hundreds of female "victims," his illegal wiretapping of
hookers and Playboy Playmates, his check-kiting schemes and gun-
toting coke dealer buddy. But Eric also reflects on another obsession,
the one that's drawn him into the web with Mitnick, De Payne, Aus-
tin, and the FBI. "Many of today's top programmers ... at one time
considered themselves hackers," writes the wanted fugitive. "...
And now it's illegal? Or is it? Where do we draw the line?"

Natural Born
Killers

The night at Gecko's in Hunt-
ington Beach didn't pan out,
but Special Agent Ornellas has been pounding the pavement, paying
a visit to the Rainbow Bar and Grill, making the rounds of Eric's
Hollywood buddies, even driving out to the house of some guy who
bore an uncanny resemblance to the hacker. He told the FBI agent a
convoluted tale that began with the accidental shotgun blast that
tore off his leg a few months ago. Eric befriended him, and then
suddenly a girl named Lisa who stripped at the Seventh Veil ap-
peared one day at his house. She was Eric's girl, but she quickly
made her new acquaintance her second one-legged conquest.

Suspecting a con, the guy with the missing leg started tapping his
own phone. Sure enough, he caught Eric secretly talking to Lisa,
planning some $2 million heist. When his birth certificate and
driver's license disappeared, the amputee started to worry where he
might fit in.

The time is about 1 a.m., Monday morning, August 29, 1994.

Ron Austin steps out of the late show of Oliver Stone's
Natural
Born Killers
at the AMC Century City 14 near the UCLA campus.
He drops off his girlfriend and drives the few blocks to the address

Stan Ornellas gave him across from the towering white Federal
Building on Wilshire Boulevard. Could Eric really be that bold?
Could he really be sleeping with a stripper across from the Los An-
geles headquarters of the FBI?

Austin cruises the 10900 block of Ashton Street in his girlfriend's
black convertible Toyota Celica. The hacker slows as he approaches
the sports car. The gold BMW's rear end hangs out five feet in the
street, as if the driver had been drunk, or in a very big hurry.

Austin hits the brake, and then quickly eases off. Don't blow it, he
thinks. Keep rolling. Eric might be watching from a window.

He glances back and reads the plate.

Texas!

"BVX29R . .. BVX2.9R . .. BVX29R," Austin repeats the se-
quence over and over. At the top of the next block, he pulls over,
scribbles the plate number on a scrap of paper, then guns it, running
three red lights to the nearby UCLA university police station.

"Can I get a patrol car?" Austin blurts out to the student dis-
patcher.

"Why?"

"There's a federal fugitive on Ashton Street," Austin hurriedly
explains. "I need a patrol car to watch the building until the FBI
arrives."

The dispatcher radios for a patrol car, while Austin dashes out to
a pay phone, dials Ornellas's pager, and waits for his call. "So
what's going on?" an amazingly alert Ornellas asks a minute later.
The agent's been sleeping with his beeper by his pillow.

"I spotted him."

"You pretty sure?"

"I'm sure," Austin tells Ornellas. "It's in front of the apartment.
Gold BMW Texas plates."

"Does it have a dent in the door?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to get the UCPD cops to watch the car."

"OK. I'll be there in a minute."

"What's this guy's name?" questions the UCLA cop from his patrol
car window.

"Justin Petersen," answers Austin.

"What's he wanted for?"

"Computer crimes. He's a fugitive."

"And your name?"

"Ron Austin."

The hacker hands the skeptical cop his driver's license, and
watches his own license run for any possible criminal record. This is
taking way too long, Austin thinks. Eric could be history any
minute.

"Can we go?"

Finally, the cop returns Austin's license and radios another cop.
Three minutes later they finally take off.

The two patrol cars wait for every green light, slowly tailing Aus-
tin's car. Austin breathes a sigh of relief as they drive past the gold
BMW. But one patrol car cruises by the apartment a second time
with its lights out. Austin worries. If Eric's looking out the window
he's gotta see this.

Seconds later, the big Crown Victoria pulls up with Ornellas and
Tepper. Austin hops out and approaches Tepper on the passenger
side.

"Why don't you get in back?"

Austin's barely in when Ornellas starts pumping him.

"What do they know?"

Austin shrugs. "They don't really know anything."

"Did you tell the cops not to run him?"

"No," Austin admits, realizing his blunder. Maybe Eric's got his
scanner, maybe he's already heard them run his record.