The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (8 page)

"Lewis De Payne. This is Ken McGuire from the FBI," says the
voice on De Payne's answering machine.

Bonnie Vitello, Mitnick's ex-wife and now De Payne's live-in girl-
friend, rolls over in bed. They're both deep sleepers.

"Let us in or we'll break down the door!' shouts a voice on the
landing.

KABOOM, KABOOM, KABOOM.

De Payne is expecting company. He checks his alarm clock. It's
very early. Must be the FBI.

"Get dressed," he tells Vitello.

De Payne swings open the door. It's the big Hawaiian, Special
Agent Stan Ornellas, a bear of a man at six foot three, well over 230
pounds, with a hand made for crushing things. Ornellas is from the
FBI's old school. He talks tough; he's fond of phrases like "I think
I'll go over and squeeze that little pinhead." Ornellas doesn't like De
Payne. The feeling is mutual.

De Payne is enjoying every minute. The comedy, the irony of it all.
The FBI, the most powerful law enforcement agency in the most
technologically advanced nation on earth, has come to search his
modest condo for evidence of his computer hacking. But it's De
Payne who knows everything about the FBI, not the other way
around. De Payne knows the numbers of the agents' cellular phones,
pagers, and bank accounts, the names of their wives, their children,
their friends at the FBI and the CIA, along with more mundane per-
sonal secrets the agents wouldn't want to share with the public.

"Could I read the warrant?"

Ornellas hands De Payne the document. De Payne skims down the
list, ticking off the names of the numerous agents standing stiffly by
as the stray cats swarm on the landing. He knows most of them:
Special Agent Ken McGuire of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, and
of course, Terry Atchley, the Pac Bell security agent who helped ar-
rest De Payne and Mitnick back in 1981. Atchley's black hair stands
up in an unlikely wave on his forehead, a cigarette permanently at-
tached to his forefinger. Atchley and De Payne don't like each other
either.

Atchley and the agents are thorough. Everything in the stale-
smelling condominium is potential evidence: Scanners, cellular
phones, modems, computers. The agents box well over a hundred
computer disks, bag after bag of miscellaneous computer and elec-
tronic parts, boxes of computer manuals, and one Pacific Telesis ID
card in the name of Lewis De Payne. All told, the agents fill out eight
pages detailing their seizure of over a hundred boxes, bags, and
single items.

When you're Kevin Mitnick's best friend and former co-
conspirator, the most mundane, private possessions are potential ev-
idence of a global computer hacking conspiracy. The FBI confiscates
ordinary telephones, a business card holder, tax forms, telephone

jacks, common commercial software programs, and a collection of
erotic videos that includes three "Ginger" productions,
Gang Bang
No. 8,
and
Mediterranean Fuckers.

Bonnie Vitello is forced to hand over her purse to the G-men.
She's not allowed to leave the sofa so she tries to do her homework
for her night class.

"If you studied computer science please raise your hand," she asks
in her cheery voice.

No hands go up. Computer science, it seems, is not a prerequisite
to investigate computer hackers. But the agents are friendly to Bon-
nie. At least one of the younger agents thinks she's cute, and insists
on following her to the bathroom. A couple of them even try to help
her with her homework.

And McGuire tries to protect the former Mrs. Mitnick.

"We're not taking Bonnie's computer," he tells the gruff Ornellas.

Ornellas has one question for Bonnie.

"Did he ever touch your computer?"

"Yes," admits Bonnie.

"Take it!" orders Ornellas.

The questioning isn't going the way Ornellas planned.

"There's this guy, Eric. He's doing really bad stuff," De Payne
tells Ornellas in a concerned tone. "He says he lives on Sepulveda
but he's really living at McCadden Place."

Special Agent Stanley Ornellas doesn't want to talk about Eric.

"These encrypted files on your computer. What's the password?"

"You fellows have to stop this guy Eric," De Payne hammers
back, spinning the conversation in a circle. He has only one ques-
tion, and one answer.

"ERIC. ERIC. ERIC."

Terry Atchley has a question for De Payne.

"Did you use SAS?"

"I'm not sure," says De Payne. "What legal definition are you
using?"

"Well, we don't want to get attorneys involved," suggests an FBI
agent. "They make everything much messier and complicated."

"I agree," says De Payne. "I just don't know what you mean."

Atchley tries again.

"Did you use SAS?"

"I'm not sure of your interpretation," repeats De Payne.

Ken McGuire tries Bonnie.

"Do you know what SAS is?"

"Oh, that's Swiss Airlines Systems. I fly them all the time."

McGuire smiles.

"Aha!" Ornellas exclaims. "What's this?"

The G-man has burrowed through the tea leaves in De Payne's
Argentinian tea bowl.

He hold up his prize, a tiny microcassette.

The best part of the prank will be revealed in the days and
weeks ahead. Soon the FBI will play De Payne's secret tape and
hear its own informant, Eric Heinz, talking about how he's tap-
ping people's phones and breaking into phone company central
offices. Then, the FBI will get to the matter of De Payne's en-
crypted hard disk. Without the codes, the FBI may need to send
the encrypted files to Washington, D.C. There the Bureau could
arrange for some super-computer time to begin the tedious pro-
cess of decrypting the codes. And if the Bureau spends enough
time and enough money, it will peel away the first encryption
mask to reveal another encrypted layer. And another and another
and another.

For when you encrypt garbage upon garbage, in the end, even the
FBI can only find garbage.

■ ■ ■

"If you aren't going to arrest me can I go to my dad's?"

"We need to search your car first."

A platoon of law enforcement agents escort Kevin Mitnick past
the complex's pool and tennis courts to his car, where they subject
the vehicle to a full search. Mitnick can't believe his eyes. A couple of
uninvited FBI agents jump in the backseat of his car like kids eager to
go for a ride.

The nerve of these guys.

Mitnick orders them out, and hops in and guns it. He screeches
down Las Virgenes, and speeds onto the busy 101 freeway:

Eighty, ninety, one hundred miles an hour.

What are they going to do? Pull me over for speeding?

At his dad's place, Mitnick phones an attorney and his aunt,
Chickie Leventhal, owner of Chickie's Bail Bonds.

"Don't talk to the feds," Chickie advises her nephew. An hour
later, Mitnick emerges from the apartment to an audience of FBI
agents.

"I'm not going to talk," he announces.

Five minutes later, once he's sure the feds have cleared out, Mit-
nick jumps back on the 101 freeway and peels over to Teltec's of-
fices, checking his rear view mirror for a tail. He boots up his hard
drive and scans his directory. This is what the FBI wants. This is
what they'll look for in a few minutes or an hour when they arrive
with their search warrant: Mitnick's secret files on the FBI.

Deleting them won't suffice. Mitnick knows that the delete com-
mand doesn't erase files, it just abandons them on the disk. Only if
the computer runs out of memory will his "deleted" files be over-
written. He's got to erase the files permanently, immediately over-
write them so they can never be reconstructed.

Mitnick types the command in a burst:

wipeinfo . . .

Kevin Mitnick doesn't have
much time. He's got one
chance. Find dirt on the undercover agent the FBI sent to screw up
his life.

He begins with a name and a number. But unlike most people,
Eric Heinz Jr.'s social security number reveals little. No employment
record, no taxes paid to the IRS, no real estate. The only useful fact
he uncovers is the name of a father in San Rafael, California.

Mitnick puts his finely tuned social engineering skills to the
task. "Can I speak to Eric Junior?" Mitnick asks in his friendly
voice.

"There's no Eric Junior here," Eric Heinz Sr. replies.

"It's important I get in touch with him," Mitnick implores.

After an awkward silence the man finally speaks.

"He died in infancy."

A death certificate, Mitnick thinks. Gotta know where little Eric
Jr. died.

"Really. Where was that?"

But it's one question too many. The man asks for a number to call
back.

A minute later, Eric Heinz Sr. phones and Kevin Mitnick answers
the pay phone at a restaurant on Sepulveda, his trusty sidekick,

De Payne, standing by. But the ruse fails. Eric Heinz Sr. suspects
something's not right.

Mitnick pushes on with his search. He learns Eric Heinz Sr. is
originally from Washington, D.C., so the hacker canvasses the death
certificates of five neighboring states, looking for Eric Heinz Jr. It's
not that easy, since many are closed to public inquiries. When he
comes up empty-handed, he tries another tack.

Kevin Mitnick, Mr. Social Security impostor, phones Heinz Sr.'s
brother.

"Are you Eric Heinz Senior?"

"No, he's my brother," the man says.

"We'll straighten that out," Mitnick says helpfully. "This is odd.
We have an Eric Heinz Junior here in the database."

That's all it takes to get the brother to reveal the whole tragic story.
Mrs. Heinz's ill-fated drive with her son to the 1962 Seattle World's
Fair, and the terrible car accident that killed mother and son.

But Mitnick is already planning his next step. It's easy, even legal.
Washington is an open state when it comes to most records. Mitnick
simply applies for the death certificate of one Eric Heinz Jr., and a
few weeks later, an official document arrives, proof that Eric Heinz
Jr., the FBI's undercover operative, has been fraudulently assuming
the identity of a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler who died three
decades ago.

On November 6, 1992, Robert Latta, Chief Probation Officer of the
Central District of California, petitions the court to issue a bench
warrant with bail fixed at $25,000 in the case of the United States
versus Kevin David Mitnick:

It is alleged that the above-mentioned supervised releasee has vio-
lated the terms and conditions to wit:

1. .. .[0]n August 7, 1992, Mr. Mitnick participated in the un-
authorized access of Pacific Bell computers (confidential voice mail
system). This was accomplished through the unauthorized use of con-
fidential and personal passwords of Pacific Bell Telephone Company

security investigators who, along with local authorities have been in-
vestigating Mr. Mitnick's employer at the time, Teltec Investigations.

2. The offender had previously been instructed regarding the spe-
cial condition prohibiting him from associating with any . . . per-
sons known to have engaged in the illegal or unauthorized access of
computers or telecommunication devices. The offender violated
this condition ... as he maintained association with one Lewis De
Payne. Mr. De Payne had been convicted of violation of 182/502
Penal Code (conspiracy to commit computer fraud) on April 2,
1982 (Case No. A370979).

The Los Angeles U.S. Attorney's Office says once the bench warrant
was issued for Kevin Mitnick he was nowhere to be found. Mitnick
tells another story. He says he was home, the FBI just came a tad
late.

Mitnick plans everything carefully, timing his operation to mid-
night, December 7, 1992, the last seconds of his federally ordered
supervised release. He invites his mother to visit to tell the FBI he
was there till midnight, and precisely at the zero hour they argue.
That explains his sudden departure.

But mom has to wait for a while. The FBI isn't nearly so precise. A
week after his parole is up, on December 15, 1992, a team of FBI
agents shows up at his apartment to arrest the wily hacker. They've got
a warrant, and they present it to Mitnick's mother. She's there to keep
Mitnick's door from being kicked in, and to gauge how badly they
want him. Mitnick's mother doesn't have much to say and the FBI
turns up very little evidence: no computer, no disks, no cellular
phones, no papers, no tangible leads. Just a newspaper article quoting
Scott Charney, the head of the Justice Department's computer crime
division, talking about the department's "deep undercover" agent.

Mitnick has underlined the words "deep undercover" and written
in a name.

"ERIC."