The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (18 page)

Ornellas hops out to talk to the UCLA cops.
"So what's the plate?" Tepper asks Austin.

The agent phones the FBI in Dallas on his Motorola flip phone to
run the license number. Ornellas waves his FBI badge at the cops,
and the two squad cars slowly drive off.

"Did they run him?" asks Tepper.

"Yeah," grumbles Ornellas.

Eric's BMW is parked only a few short steps from the front door
of the stripper's apartment. The Crown Victoria is about a block and
a half back. Austin isn't sure the agents are close enough.

"If Eric makes it to his car before you're there, you'll have a chase
on your hands."

"Good point," agrees Ornellas. "Why don't we move in closer?"

Austin gets out, and the Crown Victoria slowly circles the block,
stopping about five car lengths behind the BMW.

Austin walks back to his Celica, settles in, and waits. Even if Eric
is onto the surveillance, he's bound to come out sooner or later, and
Austin knows there's only one way out. Just to be prepared, on an
earlier trip he checked to make sure there was no back exit. The
minutes tick by. The night is pleasantly warm, but Austin resists the
temptation to open his window. He slouches comfortably, his eyes
just above the dash. He flips the dial and listens to talk radio. He
watches the car clock. It's 2:35 a.m, forty-five minutes with no sign
of Eric. Austin makes a decision. If Eric doesn't come out by three,
he's going home to catch some sleep. Five minutes pass, ten.

A crack of light flashes from the FBI agent's car.

"ERIC!!!!!" yells one of the agents.

A figure hesitates by the BMW and then dashes across the street. If
he makes it across the parking lot, Austin thinks, he'll be on Wil-
shire, and he's got a chance. Austin starts up his car, and screeches
around the block.

But the looming figure of Stan Ornellas topples Eric in the bushes.
Ornellas sticks a knee in Eric's back, cuffs him, and jerks him up by
his collar.

Eric isn't surprised the powerful agent took him down. Why, the
hacker even feels a small twinge of guilt. Ornellas, after all, was
Eric's control, the agent who groomed him for his undercover work,
joked with him, and once picked him up from a hundred-dollar ap-
pointment with his hair stylist. Eric always wanted to work under-
cover for the FBI, and now he feels a wave of remorse over having
failed so completely as a snitch. Why not say something stupid so
Ornellas can just pop him one and get it out of his system?

"So how'd you catch me?" snaps Eric.

But Special Agent Ornellas won't be drawn in. He's a profes-
sional. "Shut up, you piece of shit!"

Los Angeles Daily News, August 30, 1994

COMPUTER CRIMINAL CAUGHT AFTER IO MONTHS ON THE RUN

Keith Stone — Convicted computer criminal Justin Tanner Petersen
was captured Monday in Los Angeles, 10 months after federal au-
thorities said they discovered he had begun living a dual life as their
informant and an outlaw hacker.

Monday's arrest ends Petersen's run from the same FBI agents with
whom he had once struck a deal: to remain free on bond in ex-
change for pleading guilty to several computer crimes and helping
the FBI with other hacker cases.

... The FBI paid his rent and utilities and gave him $200 a week for
spending money and medical insurance. . . . Another computer
hacker Petersen said he helped the FBI gather information on was
Kevin Mitnick....

Eventually, Petersen said, the FBI stopped supporting him so he
turned to his nightclubs for income. But when that began to fail, he
returned to hacking for profit.

"I was stuck out on a limb. I was almost out on the street. My club
was costing me money because it was a new club," he said. "So I
did what I had to do. I am not a greedy person."

"Hi, Jon."

It's Kevin Mitnick, sounding chipper at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Septem-
ber 6, 1994. I'm a little surprised by the early call since we haven't
spoken in three months. There wasn't the usual warning call from
De Payne, and the morning hour is out of character. But I figured
Mitnick would phone sooner or later to rejoice in Eric's recent mis-
fortune.

"How's it going?"

"It's going good," Mitnick says breezily. "Other than my prob-
lems."

"Something new?"

"No, just the
New York Times
story," Mitnick says, his voice
suddenly flat. He doesn't have to tell me which one. By his tone I
know he's talking about Markoff's front-page article featuring Mit-
nick's photo.

"So why do you think it appeared?"

"He was pressured by the powers that be to do that."

Editors? The government? Intelligence agencies? I ask Mitnick
who he means, but either he doesn't have an answer, or he doesn't
want to tell me.

"What do you think of Eric getting caught?"

"I think the slimeball deserved it," Mitnick says gleefully. "His
little game paid off. I think he exactly parallels Aldrich Ames [the
treasonous CIA spy who sentenced to death over a dozen of his fel-
low spies by revealing their identities to the KGB]. He'd sell out
anybody. He calls the
Los Angeles Daily News
and says he has no
choice but to do credit card fraud because the government didn't pay
him enough. Like somebody fucking owes him a living."

"You don't think that's right, credit card fraud?"

"He's got a different philosophy. That's the line I wouldn't
cross."

"What did you think of the
New York Times
article?"

"It's media sensationalism. You oughta see the thing in the U.K.
Somebody actually gave an interview to a British newspaper that
separates the myth from the man."

Mitnick's referring to himself, of course.

"Really?" I ask, surprised.

"It's in the magazine section of the
London Observer.
It's mainly

about one person."

"I'll have to get a copy. So what are you doing these days?"
"Right now?" Mitnick asks, irked. "I'm not going to tell you

what I'm doing."

"I'm sorry. I don't need to know what you're doing."

"Look, it's nothing personal," Mitnick assures me, his voice calm

again. "Someday, we can talk."

■
■
■

The next day, the afternoon of September 7, Mitnick is not his usual
friendly self. He's worried.

"I'm curious. I hear you got a call from Schindler?" he ventures.

Schindler is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who allegedly paid Eric
cash to hunt Mitnick.

"Yeah," I answer, wondering how he knows.

Mitnick's voice is echoing strangely.

"You sound like Zeus."

"It's a computer room and it echoes," Mitnick brushes me off,
clearly agitated. "I'm trying to find out what transpired on your
part. It's kind of weird for Schindler to just call you up."

"Yeah, I think what happened was he called me the first of July."

"Before the article?" Mitnick asks, referring to the July 4
Times story.

"No, I had called Schindler because there was going to be a settle-
ment in Poulsen's trial, and he called back, and before saying any-
thing, he immediately put on his tough guy voice and said, 'When
was the last time you heard from Eric and Mitnick?' "

"You could have said, 'What makes you think I even talked to
someone?' and prodded him for information." Mitnick sighs at my
clumsiness. "I guess you weren't in the frame of mind. Do they know
what we talk about?"

"No."

"Well, my contact is going to stop tonight," Mitnick says coldly.

I'm stunned. "What did you say?" I ask.

"I said all the contact will be stopping this evening."

"Uh-huh."

"With everybody. So I wanted to find out what transpired. I
wanted to talk to you directly to find out what you would say."

"BUZZZZZ."

"Can you hold on?" Mitnick asks.

Could that be Mitnick's pager?

Mitnick conies back a few seconds later. It's my last chance.

"Let me just quickly ask you. What's the message Eric sends? The
way he was groomed and allowed to do certain things. What kind of
message does that send about the government?"

"I think it's a normal procedure for the government," Mitnick
says matter-of-factly. "If they wanna snag a big drug dealer, they'll
let all the little ones do illegal things, and basically have a blind eye
to their activities. But from what I've heard he [Eric] had the man-
uals for SAS in his house. The government actually gave them back.
There would be only one purpose for the government to give him
those manuals back. To use the equipment."

Mitnick sounds cocky, like he's got a card up his sleeve. "I believe
there's a lot to learn from Eric, if he ever talks."

"What do you mean there's a lot to learn from him?"

"About what activities they condoned, and what work he did for
them. I'm sure he knows and the government knows. / don't know
and
you
don't know.

"He's complaining the government wasn't giving him enough cash
to be a stool pigeon, and that's why he had to do credit card fraud.
Why couldn't the guy just get a job?" Mitnick bristles. "He has the
attitude he doesn't have to work. That's what separates me from him. I
would never snag someone's credit card and do that type of shit, unless
it would be a phone card or something like that. I must admit I did that
type of thing
in the past;
I did that five years ago and more."

Five years just happens to be the statute of limitations on most
federal crimes. Is this the cyberfugitive's standard disclaimer, the
small print at the bottom of the computer screen? Does Kevin Mit-
nick really think I believe that everything he did happened at least
five years ago?

"I kind of used it as a way to mask my location," Mitnick con-
tinues. "But as far as actually ordering equipment or getting cash
from people's cards, that was a line I didn't cross."

"That's a line you don't cross?"

"No. And I don't think Eric had a problem with that because I
don't think he's a true hacker. I think he just used computers to do
high-tech burglary. Maybe he started off as one, and thought that it
could be a profitable business and turned into a thief. I don't know."

Kevin Mitnick, the most wanted man in cyberspace, is defining
the line between a high-tech criminal and a true computer hacker.
Mitnick says he doesn't hack for money. It's knowledge he wants,
tricks that can make him a master wizard.

"With DEC [Digital Equipment Corporation], all I did was take it
[the company's latest source code to its VMS operating system] to
learn and figure out the holes in it. There was no ulterior motive to
wreak havoc or anything. I kind of justified to myself that's OK
because I'm not going to sit there and sell it.

"I kind of in my own mind picture it as, hey, going to a video store
and getting a copy of
Jurassic Park,
and making a copy of it. Their
copy is still intact and untouched and unharmed. I have a copy of it.
I'm not going to invite people over and charge them admission to
watch the film, yet I have it for my own viewing.

"That's how I saw my type of stuff, and that's how I still see it.
The government totally convinced the public that, 'No, he deprived
the other person!' Instead of my analogy, it's like they say, 'He went
into Lucasfilms and took
Jurassic Park
and nobody got to see it but
him, and he made a mint by selling it to Paramount.' There's two
different sets of laws, you know what I'm saying?"

Few people get busted for making a single copy of
Jurassic Park, or, for that matter, a single copy of Microsoft Windows. But then
the programs Mitnick supposedly copied aren't anything like videos
or commercial software. If they are for sale, they'd be worth hun-
dreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. And those that aren't
for sale are considered proprietary, part of a corporation's closely
guarded assets.

Second, the odds are Mitnick first had to hack into the target
computer before he made his copy. Title 18, 1030, of the United
States Code, "Fraud and related activity in connection with com-
puters," defines computer crime broadly as "knowingly accessing] a
computer without authorization." Just about any computer that

isn't your own is off limits. That includes corporate computers or
those operated by any United States agency, or any with "financial
record[s]" or a "federal interest."

The statutes provide additional penalties for damaging computer
files or trafficking in passwords or access codes for computers. 1029
describes "access device" frauds, and defines an access device as
"any card, plate, code account number ... that can be used ... to
obtain money, goods, services or any other thing of value...." In
other words, anything from cloning cellular phones to using stolen
credit or telephone cards, or computer passwords.