The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (9 page)

It's a few minutes before 10 a.m. on Christmas Eve, and Kevin Mitnick
is on the phone to the Department of Motor Vehicles' local law en-
forcement counter, hoping to coax them into sending a holiday fax.

Mitnick's been trying since September to get the driver's license
photos of the people he figures are trying to take away his freedom.
Mitnick's previous attempts failed, but something tells him today
will be different. Christmas Eve is a perfect time for a social engi-
neering attack. People are less suspicious on the holidays, more
likely to let something slip. And if it fails again, what does he have to
lose? The FBI already wants him. What's a few pretext calls to the
DMV going to matter?

Besides, Mitnick sounds like he works in law enforcement. He
knows the requester codes. Everything he says sounds authentic.

"Hold on a minute," a technician tells him. The flag on the file
tells him something's unusual. On a second line, the technician
phones DMV Investigator Ed Lovelace in Sacramento. This isn't just
any driver's license photo.

"I've got him on the line."

"Tell him you're getting the photos. Say they're having problems
with the computer in their office," Lovelace instructs the technician.
"Tell him to call back in forty-five minutes to see if they're avail-
able."

Like clockwork, Mitnick phones back. Today his persistence is
paying off. The pictures are ready.

"What's your fax number?" the technician asks Mitnick.

Up at DMV headquarters in Sacramento, Lovelace quickly does a
reverse check on the fax number: Kinkos Copies, Studio City, 1210
Ventura Boulevard. The investigator phones Shirley Lessiak, DMV
internal affairs in Van Nuys, and gives her the rundown. Lessiak
phones the Kinkos manager, who in turn promises to tell them when
the suspect comes in to pick up the fax. Around noon on Christmas
Eve, Lessiak and three other DMV investigators arrive at the busy
Kinkos on Ventura Boulevard.

Kevin Mitnick calmly walks behind the counter and picks up his
fax. He's always been a self-service kind of guy. But the DMV photo
isn't what Mitnick's expecting. It's a young woman, a full body shot.
Some kind of joke.

What the fu
—

"Hey, we want to talk to you!"

Four suits. They don't want to talk about root beer.

Mitnick walks toward them, and then tosses the papers up in the
air.

The chase is on. Two of the suits clutch at the papers, and Mitnick
doubles his odds. He's in the parking lot, running toward Ralph's
supermarket, dashing toward the crowded holiday sidewalks. He
churns his strong legs and pumps his arms. Within a minute, the
footsteps fade. One DMV pursuer is overweight, the other is out of
shape.

Down the sidewalk, across Ventura Boulevard into a residential
neighborhood. He clambers over a wall and hits the ground running.
Kevin Mitnick is in top physical condition. They don't have a
chance.

Two miles from Kinkos, the hacker slows to a jog.

He peels off his sport shirt and congratulates himself on having
worn shorts under his pants. He turns his shirt inside out, tears the
pants off, and stashes them in a front yard. Then, he finds the nearest
pay phone, and calls a cab and his friend Lewis De Payne.

Kevin Mitnick is on the run.

II.

It's early 1992.
Ron Austin is cruising down
the Sunset Strip past the Rainbow Bar and Grill, when he sees Eric
Heinz huddled in the doorway of the club next door, dodging the
rain. It's nearly 3 a.m., as Austin pulls over and rolls down his win-
dow to say hello.

The last time Austin saw him was a few months ago at a Taco
Bell. Eric wanted him to bring his laptop and meet him there, and
Austin did just that. But then, suddenly, Eric had to go to the bath-
room. Everything skidded into slow motion. The undercover cars
converged on the outdoor patio. Big Agent Stan Ornellas slammed
Austin's face against the wall, shouted, and in one quick move
pressed a gun against his temple.

Austin was blindsided. He had considered Eric a friend. When
they first met in 1989, Austin was studying economics at UCLA,
trying to go straight after being busted for hacking in 1983 with
Kevin Poulsen. But neither Austin nor Poulsen had found it easy to
quit. Poulsen took a job in Northern California for a defense con-
tractor and seemed on the verge of a legitimate career in computers.
But Austin knew that was only half of his life. Nights Poulsen would
phone Austin from yet another Pacific Bell central office he had
sneaked into, his voice barely audible over the clatter of old electro—

mechanical telephone switching equipment. Soon Poulsen was play-
ing Austin wiretaps and describing how they could win radio prizes.
Then the inevitable happened. The police stumbled onto a storage
locker Poulsen kept crammed with hacking and burglary tools. The
FBI secretly readied a federal indictment, and Poulsen, fearing the
worst, ducked underground.

In 1989, Eric put an ad in a Los Angeles paper looking for some-
one with special knowledge of the phone company. Poulsen and
Austin responded, and they became an unlikely trio: Poulsen, then a
famous federal fugitive profiled on
Unsolved Mysteries;
Eric, the
rocker; and Austin, the economist. Poulsen wanted Eric around to
join him on his nightly forays into the central offices of Los Angeles,
looking for new secrets to the phone system. But he didn't trust Eric
and guarded his knowledge carefully. It was Austin who found Eric's
Hollywood style and fearlessness intriguing. He taught Eric the se-
cret of SAS, the Pac Bell system that could manipulate phone lines to
win radio contests or wiretap. Austin even shared a $10,000 radio
prize with Eric, so the rocker could buy his girlfriend breast im-
plants. He helped Eric secretly move when the FBI found out where
he was living. And once, when Eric was traipsing through a Pac Bell
central office, Austin called him on the PA system to warn him the
cops were about to surround the building.

After the FBI roughed him up at Taco Bell, Austin spent a long
weekend in solitary confinement and then pled guilty to wiretapping,
fraudulently winning a $50,000 Porsche, and rigging a host of other
L.A. radio giveaways. Austin admitted his crimes, and put up bond
for the $50,000 bail, but still Austin needed to understand. He was
the educated member of the gang after all. Why had Eric betrayed
him?

■
■
■

Late tonight on the Sunset Strip, a few months after the bust, Austin
can finally confront Eric. He hops out of his car and approaches.
Suddenly the rocker reaches behind his back. A black shape whips
forward. Austin flashes on the time Eric jammed his gun to a
homeless woman's head. But it's just an innocuous Motorola flip
phone.

"What's up?" says Eric coolly, as if he were expecting the chance
encounter.

"You changed your hair color," offers Austin.

"No, I haven't," Eric shrugs, though he's clearly got new blond
highlights.

"So why'd you turn me in?"

"They wanted to put me away for ten years," Eric begins defen-
sively, and then becomes more combative. He doesn't need to make
excuses. He was just doing his job. When the feds debriefed him he
could have made it worse for Austin. Made it seem like Austin did
more than he did. "I didn't like you talking with Frecia, and I didn't
like the double agent game you were playing, telling Poulsen one
thing and me another."

Austin can't believe Eric turned him in just because he talked to
one of Eric's girls. And that line about him being a double agent? All
he did was teach Eric how to hack: how to wiretap by computer and
win radio prizes. Is that why Eric ratted him out?

Austin protests for a moment, but realizes he's getting nowhere.
He motions to say goodbye, but Eric isn't finished. "We should
talk," Eric suggests, asking Austin to give him a ride home. Eric
wants to see what Austin's up to, whether he's freelancing or
whether the feds sent him to check up on him.

But at his third Oakwood apartment (Mitnick's already discov-
ered the first two) Eric shows Austin the toys the FBI has let him
keep: a lineman's test set useful for wiretapping, a computer, a mo-
dem, and a thin, flat tape recorder to plant on himself. Even more
surprising is some of the paraphernalia Austin recognizes from the
past, notebooks Eric used to document commands to hack into Pac
Bell and other computer systems.

"They're trying to get Kevin Mitnick," Eric announces, handing
Austin a ham and cheese sandwich, and joking, "You're eating gov-
ernment ham."

Austin listens carefully as Eric describes how the FBI is footing the
bill for more than just the eats.

"They've got me set up to bust hackers. They pay me cash, and
they pick up the thirteen-hundred-dollar rent. They're going to let
me live here awhile."

Austin gets the feeling Eric shouldn't be confiding these secrets.
But could the FBI really be in business with Eric? The whole thing
sounds so off the cuff, so unsupervised. Handing a guy like Eric cash,
a cellular phone, his own apartment, and tools to wiretap? The FBI
has to know about Eric's credit frauds, his wiretapping for a Holly-
wood detective, his bondage games, his gun.

"I've been talking with Mitnick," Eric brags.

■ ■ ■

Over the next year, Austin spots Eric on the Strip every few months.
He keeps his distance, never letting Eric spot him. But in August
1993, a happenstance gives Austin an opportunity for revenge. Like
Kevin Mitnick and so many other hackers, Austin has a score to
settle with the double agent. One afternoon, Austin is out for a drive
with a friend on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, winding up above the
bright lights of Hollywood.

"There it is!" she cries, excitedly pulling over.

She's spotted the BMW she saw a few days ago on Lookout
Mountain, the California Highway Patrol baseball cap still sitting on
the rear dash, the expensive motorized antenna protruding from the
roof. Eric's BMW. Eric had made no secret about what he was doing
with the equipment. He was monitoring a DEA operation with his
scanner, snapping photos of a DEA undercover plane with his tele-
photo lens.

At least that's the story he gave her.

As a self described "FBI Consultant" Justin [Eric's real name] had
once told me that all of his rent and living expenses were paid for by
the FBI. Though I was always curious what he did for the FBI I
knew that the FBI would soon find that employing Justin in any
capacity was a grave mistake and quickly rid themselves of his ser-
vices. I began to wonder how he was supporting himseif. How
could he afford a BMW? I noticed that the house had an expensive
directional antenna on the roof. How could he afford that, the ra-
dio equipment he'd been seen with, a car phone, telephoto camera,
etc?.. . The only time in the past that he'd made any substantial
amount of money was through credit card fraud or placing wiretaps and selling credit information to the private investigation
firm.... I began to wonder about his motives for the intense inter-
est in Drug Enforcement Agency surveillances. Could he be selling
the information he obtained to those being watched by the DEA?
— Ron Austin, memo to the FBI, 1993

Four a.m. one August morning, Austin arrives at 2270 Laurel Can-
yon Boulevard, two hours before the Thursday morning garbage
men make their regular rounds.

He doesn't look like the type who'd rummage through garbage.
He's got a bit of a tan, shaggy blond hair that hangs over his pene-
trating, intelligent eyes, a strong, square jaw, and a straight nose.
He's athletic, though his shoulders hunch and he tends to stare at the
ground as he walks.

He drags the bin quietly around the corner and removes the lid.
Austin slowly draws out a wad of Saran wrap, tangled with duct
tape and Vaseline, remnants from Eric's latest bondage session. He's
glad he's worn the gloves.

Flashlight in hand, Austin digs out bits of Eric's garbage: VIP
passes for a weekly evening, "On the Rox," Eric co-hosts at a private
Sunset club. There's a slick drawing of a sexy woman pursing her
lips with the caption "I'm so excited I could spit." Austin smooths
out the next piece of paper from the bin, a crumpled computer print-
out titled "G: Girls," with entries such as "Heather, met at Bar
One," and "Lesa, Oriental," and notations like "Crazy Girls" and
"20/20" — a couple of Hollywood strip joints. Next, there's a
business card listing Eric Heinz as an "Electronic Surveillance Spe-
cialist," with expertise in "phone tap detection" and "high-tech
debugging."

Austin comes up empty-handed the following two Thursdays, but
he's persistent. On September 2, 1993, he stumbles onto a parking
ticket issued just days ago for the BMW, phones the Parking Viola-
tions Bureau, and learns the car has four hundred dollars in unpaid
parking tickets. The same morning he retrieves discarded collection
notices for Sprint and MCI bills in the name of Joseph Wernle.

The next couple of weeks' pickings are so-so: a one-page hand-
written list of sixty hijacked cable channels, nearly nine hundred
dollars of prescription bills gone to collectors, and a scrap of paper
that names the electronics chain The Good Guys, with an account
number that Austin discovers was closed due to "fraudulent ac-
tivity."