The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (10 page)

Finally, on September 23, 1993, nearly six weeks after he began
his regular trash inspections, Austin finds something solid. "Top
200" reads the note, in what appears to be Eric's handwriting:

1.
L.A.P.D.

2. Misc P.D.

3.
D.E.A.

4. F.B.I.

5. S.S.
+
Marshall

6. P.S.

7.
Fire
+
Rescue.

8. Cellular.

9.
Cordless
10.
Spooks.

Top 10 is more like it. Eric has programmed his scanner's memory
with about ten frequencies — the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service,
and others. What surprises Austin is item six, Eric's new interest in
the postal service. But the biggest clue is a single scrap of paper Aus-
tin plucks from Eric's trash October 7.

#3
G
—
pencil

#3
Go
—
pert

#3
P
—
Crayon

#4 —
Blue Marker

#4
Go
—
Gold Marker

#5—
Red Marker

#5 —
Gold Silver Marker

#6
—
Spray Paint

AT
—
Ass Tounger

7-11
—
feeder

Gas Station
—
burn

Pesos
—
Monopoly

PI — Dudley

PD — Bullwinkle

Scanner
— TV

Boxing
—
Take a Walk

P# —
pink slip

Cash
—
peanuts

The B
—
coin collectors

Surveillance
—
Nice day, means none

Encrypted Speech
—
Screwing

Use our Radios to chat
—
Whats on HBO

I am being watched
—
Watch a Porno Flick

You are being watched
—
Steak dinner

Box
—
Pussy

Shopping
—
Going to a Concert

C went bad
—
Sour Milk

Security
—
They had Friends

Key
—
Diamond

$100
—1
peanut

$1,000
—10
Peanuts

I.D.
—
Borrow a Tool.

Eric seems to have developed an elaborate X-rated code to discuss
his crimes by radio and phone. Austin is puzzled by the first items,
then kicks himself for not figuring it out faster. Credit cards, of
course! American Express cards begin with the number "3" and are
either "G" (green), "Go" (gold), or "P" (platinum). Visa cards begin
with the number "4" and are either regular or "Go" (gold), and
so on.

"Box," "Key," "$1,000," "ID," "Encrypted Speech," and "Sur-
veillance" are all pretty clear to Austin. So are "C went bad" —
credit went bad — and "Security." Austin guesses that "PI" stands
for Postal Inspector, "Boxing" has something to do with rifling mail-
boxes, and "AT," or "Ass-Tounger," is code for an ATM, or auto-
matic teller machine.

About a week later, a little after ten in the evening, Austin is strolling
in the Melrose fashion district when just as he passes the trendy
Nuclear Nuance nightclub he runs into Eric. Austin has calculated
the coincidence. He's still working on his case against Eric, playing
his own game of cat and mouse. He doesn't trust the FBI to act on
the evidence he's already collected on Eric's crimes. He's going to see
what else he can learn about Eric's misdeeds before he meets with
Agent Stan Ornellas. Austin understands the system, and he isn't
going to give the FBI a chance to protect their paid informant.

"What are you doing here?" Eric asks.

"I've got a friend who lives around the corner. What about you?"

Eric doesn't believe him for a second. More than a year ago, when
Austin dropped by the Rainbow, Eric reported it to the FBI. Tonight,
too, Eric knows Austin is up to something, but like their last encoun-
ter, he'll play along. He needs to gauge whether Austin's working for
the feds, because this time Eric's getting back into "business."

"This is my club," Eric says. "I'm hosting Velvet Jam Night."

Austin already knows. In his pocket is the complimentary pass he
plucked from Eric's trash that reads, "Live music, celebrity guests,
dancing and dinner til z a.m!"

"Come on in!" Eric welcomes. "I'll buy you a beer."

Austin follows Eric inside, taking in the ficus trees strung with
white lights, the red carpet, the oak trim and red tufted button Nau-
gahyde booths. Eric fits right in with his suave four-hundred-dollar
olive drab Italian suit, crisp denim shirt, and Doc Marten's combat
boots. He seems happy in his element. But when Austin mentions the
fugitive hacker, the FBI's undercover operative's mood sours.

"Fucking Mitnick!" he grumbles. "He got ahold of the SAS de-
signer's notes, and now he's using SAS to tap phones. He's tapping
me, too."

"Really?" Austin says, wondering how Mitnick got SAS.

"You want to hear something funny?" Eric asks. "When I told
Mitnick that Poulsen was a better hacker than him, he got pissed. It
really seemed to offend him."

Austin asks what Mitnick looks like, and Eric tells him he's lost a
lot of weight. He also says he thinks Lewis De Payne is going to be a
witness for the prosecution.

"So why didn't they just bust Mitnick anyway?"

"The FBI blew the Mitnick investigation. The FBI still doesn't
know how Mitnick caught wind of the bust," Eric explains. "I of-
fered to go to Vegas at my own expense and track down Mitnick,
but the FBI turned down my offer. Now the fucker pages me day and
night. His favorite one is to page me with the number of the Los
Angeles office of the FBI."

Eric doesn't tell Austin what else Mitnick did to him to avenge his
undercover work for the FBI. The persistent calls Mitnick made to
Fernando Peralta at the Hollywood office of the Social Security Ad-
ministration. The investigation that suspended Eric's thousands of
dollars of fraudulent social security benefits. In fact, Mitnick orches-
trated the handing over of Heinz's file to the Office of Investigations
for preparation of a criminal case. But there had been no arrest or
prosecution of Eric Heinz on his fraud. Vickie Roberts, the OIG
supervisor to whom Fernando Peralta gave the file, explained, "We
would investigate anything that would involve a fraud. Whether that
would be prosecuted would be up to the U.S. Attorney's [Central
District] Office."

Six months have passed, and the U.S. Attorney's Office has given
no sign of prosecuting Eric for social security fraud.

■ ■ ■

"My new hobby is listening to law enforcement surveillance on my
scanners," Eric says, ticking off the names of his countersurveillance
equipment.

"I'm not up to anything, you know," Eric insists. "I make enough
money promoting these clubs."

Austin glances around at the uncrowded room and thinks what
a far cry it is from the evenings when he and Poulsen used to meet
Eric down at the Rainbow Bar and Grill, barely able to squeeze
their way through the leather and lingerie girls. Austin sits on his
bar stool, skeptical but expressionless, waiting for Eric to say
something.

"Well, I suppose if something really big came along . . ."

Three evenings later, Austin parks by the garbage cans at 2.270 Lau-
rel Canyon. This time he's been invited.

"Hey, how it's going?" Eric welcomes him, and proudly displays
his seven radios and two scanners. Austin is surprised Eric is show-
ing off his stuff, but then that's like Eric. Maybe he's got something
up his sleeve, too.

The phone rings. Eric picks up the handset. Silence. The same
interminable silence he's come to expect the last few months. "Have
fun, Kevin!" he groans, hanging up.

Eric's barely put down the phone when his pager buzzes. "It's just
Mitnick," Eric explains. He says he's on Mitnick's tail, listening to
the local ham radio channels for signs of the hacker, and thinking of
going to Vegas to dig up leads. He asks Austin if he's interested in
joining the chase. Austin isn't. He can see for himself that Mitnick
hunts his pursuers with a vengeance.

Eric explains how the Mitnick investigation began. He says the
FBI had a budget set aside to find Kevin Poulsen's secret computer
and bust Austin. When Eric helped the FBI find the computer quickly
and under budget [and set up Austin], he was hired to build a case
against Mitnick.

Eric flips on a scanner. "I've got them all programmed in," he
says, handing Austin his list of law enforcement frequencies.

"What have you heard on the federal frequencies?" Austin asks.

"Postal Inspector stakeouts of mail trucks," Eric replies. "People
breaking into the trucks to steal mail, social security checks and
stuff."

Eric's other scanner crackles with the sound of two FBI agents
discussing an informant. As Austin and Eric listen, the FBI surveil-
lance moves to the Oakwood Apartments. "The FBI moves a lot of
informants there," Eric explains of his old FBI address. "When I was
there I knew at least one other informant in the complex.... Maybe
we should go have a look at these guys."

Eric opens his dresser drawer and pulls out some photos he's
taken with a telephoto lens.

"FBI Organized Crime Division," Eric announces, pointing out
several unmarked cars and a van with a roof vent. "See the agents?"
Eric spreads out several pictures, and describes the FBI agents standing in front of a bar or restaurant. "It's where they go after surveil-
lance."

Eric's show-and-tell continues as he pulls a SAS wiretapping man-
ual from the closet and hands it to Austin. "I can't believe the FBI
gave this back to me," Eric laughs.

"You know for a while I even had a desk in the FBI offices on
Wilshire," he chuckles. "There are a lot of things I know that the FBI
would rather I didn't."

■ ■ ■

The phone rings again. "Have fun, Kevin!"

And again. This time it's a friend. Eric talks for a couple of min-
utes.

"Mitnick just paged my friend with Frecia's number!" Eric
moans. "I don't even talk to Frecia anymore! How did Mitnick get
that number?"

Austin shrugs. Doesn't Eric know it's hacker justice? "Aren't you
worried that Poulsen might also harass you when he gets out of
jail?"

"I'll just drop out," Eric says. "He won't find me."

Austin is silent.

"So," Eric says, smiling. "Do you really expect me to believe that
you were just walking by the club on Friday?"

I asked Justin [Eric] if he knew why the private investigators he
worked for .. . were never charged with wiretapping... . He said,
"What makes you think that they might not still get charged?" I
asked Justin if he'd ever spoke [sic] with ... [a former partner in the
detective agency]. He said that he'd met him at the [detective's]
office and spoke with him a few times there. I asked Justin if he was
aware that [the detective] was [with] the FBI in Los Angeles. . . .
— Ron Austin, memo to the FBI, 1993

October 22, 1993.
Eric slumps in his chair at
the large oak table in the U.S. Attorney's conference room on the
eleventh floor of the Federal Building, drained from last night's
kinky games with the stripper from the Seventh Veil. Next to Eric
sits his court-appointed attorney, Morton Boren, and standing in the
room are the two FBI agents Eric knows by first name. But it's Spe-
cial Agent Stan Ornellas who commands attention, his thick arms
crossed, his 230-pound torso immobile, his face a dark mask. The
FBI agent waits a long, calculated time before he narrows his fierce
eyes on Eric.

"I told you not to fuck with me."

Eric knows better than to respond. He's in trouble, that much is
painfully obvious. The sudden request for a meeting, the suggestion
that he bring his attorney, the early hour .. .

One single sheet of white paper sits on the big oak table. The
paper is upside down, facing the seat the Assistant U.S. Attorney will
occupy, but Eric can still make out a portion of it. It looks like a list
of federal law enforcement frequencies — the FBI, the DEA, the
ATF — the same radio frequencies he showed Austin.

The door opens.

"Sorry I'm late," apologizes Assistant U.S. Attorney David Schin-
dler, breezing in and taking his chair.

Schindler is everything Eric Heinz isn't, from his neatly trimmed
curly black hair to his crisply starched white dress shirt and elegant,
understated suit. Polite, orderly, and boyishly handsome, Schindler
is a rising star in the powerhouse Los Angeles U.S. Attorney's Office.
Only one person stands between David Schindler and the top slot.