Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (9 page)

He ordered them to send me to a facility with a college program. They sent me to Karl Holton, in Stockton, east of San Francisco. Still a very long way from home, but I felt I had won, and felt very proud of myself. Looking back, I’m reminded of the lyrics from that Tom Petty song: “You could stand me up at the gates of hell but I won’t back down.”

Karl Holton turned out to be, for me, the Holiday Inn of the California Youth Authority. Better living conditions, better food. Though it was a
five-hour drive, my mom and Gram came every other weekend, as before bringing loads of food. We’d cook steak or lobsters on the outdoor grills, like civilized people, and Mom and I would hunt four-leaf clovers on the lawn of the outdoor visiting area. Their visits helped make my time in custody feel shorter.

The counselors would drop around to meet the parents, and mine really seemed extra polite to my mom.

Other aspects of my stay didn’t go as smoothly. The only razors allowed were the throw-away kind, forever nicking my skin, so I stopped shaving. My beard grew full and thick, completely changing my appearance; I would keep it only as long as I was inside.

I was given early release after only six months. When my Conditions of Release document was being prepared, I was asked, “What condition can we put on you that you won’t keep hacking?”

How could I answer that? I said, “Well, there’s ethical hacking and there’s unethical hacking.”

“I need some formal language,” was the reply. “What can I put down?”

Star Wars
came to mind. I said, “You could call it ‘darkside hacking.’ ”

That’s the way it was entered into my Conditions: “No darkside hacking.”

I think it was an
LA Times
reporter who somehow came upon that term. It got picked up and widely reported by the press; it became a kind of nickname for me. Kevin Mitnick, the Darkside Hacker.

After my release, a cop called me, giving his name as Dominick Domino and explaining that he was the guy who had driven me to juvenile hall when I was picked up at Fromin’s. He was working on an LAPD training video about computer crime. Would I be willing to come in for an on-camera interview? Sure, why not?

I doubt they’re still using the production this many years later, but for a while I was part of the effort to help LA cops learn about catching guys like me.

At that time, Gram was sharing digs with a friend of hers, Donna Russell, who as a director of software development at 20th Century Fox was able to offer me a job. I thought,
Way cool—maybe I’ll even rub
shoulders with some movie stars
. I loved that job. I worked right on the lot, walking past soundstages to get to my building; the pay was fair, they were training me in developing applications using COBOL and IBM’s Basic Assembly Language, plus I was learning about working with IBM mainframes and HP minicomputers.

But all good things come to an end, they say—in this case, sooner rather than later. Another employee put in a grievance that under union rules the job should have been offered to current employees.

After only two months, I was back on the street, jobless.

It came as a real shock one day when my Parole Officer, Melvin Boyer, called to say, “Kevin, have a big breakfast, eat all you can, then come in to see me.” That could only mean one thing: trouble.

In the ham radio world of Los Angeles, there was a repeater group on 147.435 Mhz that had been dubbed “the animal house.” People would attack one another, use foul language, and jam other people’s transmissions. For me, it was a game. I’d later learn that a guy in the animal house group who must have had some grudge against me had called the
Youth Authority
Parole Office to complain I had hacked into his company’s network. I hadn’t. But the guy worked for Xerox, which I guess made him credible.

Mom drove me in. The supervising parole agent asked me to accompany him to his office. He told my mom I’d be right back and said she should wait in the lobby. Instead, I was immediately handcuffed by the supervisor as they whisked me away out the side door to a waiting car. I yelled to my mom that they were sneaking me out the side and arresting me for something I hadn’t even done.

I was dropped off at the Van Nuys jail by my Parole Officer and his supervisor. By a weird coincidence, my uncle Mitchell had called me from that same jail only a few weeks earlier. His life had been a skyrocket up and a plummet down: he had become a real-estate multimillionaire, settled into a mansion in Bel Air, which is way more upscale than Beverly Hills, a number-one address in all of LA. But then he had discovered cocaine, which led to heroin, which—old story—led to the loss of house, fortune, honor, and self-respect.

But at that point I still had a lot of affection for him. The night when he called from the Van Nuys jail, I had said, “Do you want me to fix the pay phone so you can make calls for free?” Sure he did.

I told him, “When we hang up, get back on and dial 211-2345. That’ll give you an automated announcement of the number of the phone you’re using. Then call me back collect and tell me the number.” When I had the number, the next step involved manipulating one of the phone company switches. From my computer I dialed into the appropriate switch and changed the “line class code” on that phone to the code for a home telephone, which would allow incoming and outgoing calls. While I was at it, I added three-way calling and call-waiting. And I programmed the phone so all the charges would go on the bill of LAPD’s Van Nuys station.

Now it was a week later and where am I but at the same Van Nuys jail, where thanks to my favor for Uncle Mitchell, I can make all the calls I want, free. I stayed on the phone all night. Talking with my friends helped me escape the reality of where I was. Plus I needed to find an attorney who could represent me because I knew it was going to be an uphill battle when I was sent back to face the California Youth Authority Parole Board. Parolees have very limited rights, and the board members would only need to believe I
probably
did whatever I was being accused of; the evidence didn’t have to meet the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” as in a criminal trial.

Then things went from bad to worse. They transferred me to LA County Jail, where I was greeted by being told to strip naked so they could spray me with insecticide. I was led to a dormitory that scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know whom to be more frightened of: the really dangerous guys who looked like they’d steal an eyeball if they got the chance, or the crazy guys who could hurt somebody and not even know they were doing it. All the cots were already taken, leaving me no place to sleep. I just sat against the wall struggling to keep my eyes open so when the sun came up I’d still have all the possessions I arrived with.

Boyer, my Youth Authority Parole Officer, told my mom, “LA County is a very dangerous place. He could get hurt there,” and got me transferred the next day, back to Norwalk. If I saw Boyer today, I’d probably give him a big hug for that.

I was twenty years old but, thanks to the probation, still under the jurisdiction of the Youth Authority. This was my third time in Norwalk Reception Center; some of the guards were like old friends.

In my appearance before the parole board, they obviously didn’t take the charge too seriously, maybe because there was no evidence but a report from the Parole Officer based on a single complaint. They held I disobeyed an order from the Probation Department to stop using my ham radio. But it hadn’t been a legal order: only the FCC had the authority to take away my ham privileges. They gave me sixty days; by then I had already been inside for about fifty-seven, so I was released a few days later.

When my mom picked me up, I had her drive me to the LA Police Academy. I had heard they sold a license-plate frame that supposedly was cop-friendly—a cop who saw it might not pull you over for a traffic infraction. In the store I noticed a stack of books: the LAPD yearbook. I said I wanted one “as a gift for my uncle, who’s with the LAPD.” It cost $75 but it was amazing, like finding the Holy Grail: it had the picture of every LAPD officer,
even the undercover guys assigned to organized crime
.

I wonder if they still put that book out every year… and sell a copy to anyone who shows up with cash in hand.

A friend of my mother’s, an entrepreneur named Don David Wilson, was running several companies under an umbrella firm called Franmark. He hired me to help with computer-related tasks—programming, data entry, etc. The work was boring, so for fun, excitement, and intellectual challenge—this won’t surprise you—I turned back to hacking and phreaking, often with my old phone-phreaker buddy Steve Rhoades, who would come over in the evenings to use the computers at Franmark.

One day on the way to lunch with a young lady from work, I spotted a bunch of guys in suits who looked like cops, then recognized one as my Parole Officer and another as one of the guys who had searched my car years earlier for the “logic bomb.” I knew they weren’t there for a social visit. Shit! My adrenaline started pumping, fear pulsing through me. I couldn’t start running or walking fast without attracting attention. So I moved to put my back to the suits and pulled the gal into a big hug, whispering in her ear that I spotted an old friend and didn’t want him to see me. We got into her car, still within sight of the group.

I ducked down and asked her to please drive out in a hurry because I needed to make an important call. From a pay phone, I dialed the
LAPD’s West Valley Division and asked to be transferred to records. “This is Detective Schaffer,” I said. “I need to check a subject for any hits, local and in NCIC” (the FBI’s National Crime Information Center). “Mitnick, that’s M-I-T-N-I-C-K, Kevin David. The subject’s DOB is 8-6-1963.”

I pretty damn well knew what the answer was going to be.

“Yes, I have a hit on him. It looks like a violation warrant issued by the CYA.”

Fuuck!
But at least they didn’t get to arrest me.

I called my mom and said, “Hey, I’m at 7-Eleven, we should talk.”

It was a code I had established with her. She knew which 7-Eleven, and that I needed to talk because I was in trouble. When she showed up, I told her the story and that I needed a place to stay until I decided what I was going to do.

Gram worked out with her friend Donna Russell, the lady who had hired me at Fox, that I could sleep on her living room couch for a few days.

Mom drove me over there, stopping en route so I could buy a toothbrush, razor, and some changes of undershorts and socks. As soon as I was settled, I looked in the Yellow Pages for the nearest law school, and spent the next few days and evenings there poring over the Welfare and Institutions Code, but without much hope.

Still, hey, “Where there’s a will…” I found a provision that said that for a nonviolent crime, the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court expired either when the defendant turned twenty-one or two years after the commitment date, whichever occurred later. For me, that would mean two years from February 1983, when I had been sentenced to the three years and eight months.

Scratch, scratch. A little arithmetic told me that this would occur in about four months. I thought,
What if I just disappear until their jurisdiction ends?

I called my attorney to try out the idea on him. His response sounded testy: “You’re absolutely wrong. It’s a fundamental principle of law that if a defendant disappears when there’s a warrant out for him, the time limit is tolled until he’s found, even if it’s years later.”

And he added, “You have to stop playing lawyer.
I’m
the lawyer. Let me do my job.”

I pleaded with him to look into it, which annoyed him, but he finally agreed. When I called back two days later, he had talked to my Parole Officer, Melvin Boyer, the compassionate guy who had gotten me transferred out of the dangerous jungle at LA County Jail. Boyer had told him, “Kevin is right. If he disappears until February 1985, there’ll be nothing we can do. At that point the warrant will expire, and he’ll be off the hook.”

Some people are angels. Donna Russell contacted her parents, who had a place in Oroville, California, about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco. And yes, they would be willing to take in a lodger who would help around the place, subsidized by monthly payments from his mom.

I was on a Greyhound the next day for the long trip, which gave me time to pick a temporary name for myself: Michael Phelps (the last name taken from the TV series
Mission Impossible
).

A rumor, probably started by one of those reliable hacker “friends” of mine, circulated that I had fled to Israel. In fact I did not then—and would not for quite a few more years—even cross the border into Canada or Mexico, much less travel overseas. But this was another of those stories that would become part of the legend, another untrue “fact” of my history that would later be used to convince judges not to grant me bail.

My hosts in Oroville, Jessie and Duke, were retired, living on a homestead of half an acre in a farming area. Nice people but very set in their ways. The days were precise in their routine. Up at 5:00 every morning, corn bread and milk for breakfast. After dinner, watch game shows on TV. No computer. No modem. No ham radio. Tough for a kid like me, but way better than being behind the walls of a Youth Authority facility.

The couple kept chickens and pigs, and had two dogs. To me, it felt like
Green Acres
. I swear one of their pigs looked exactly like Arnold, the pig on the show!