Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker

WANTED FOR VIOLATION OF SUPERVISED RELEASE
But the picture on it is the one taken more than six years ago at the FBI
offices in Los Angeles, the same one the 
New York Times
used, from back
when I was way heavier and grubby-looking from not having showered or
shaved for three days.
I tell the agent, “That doesn’t look like me at all.”
Running through my mind is the thought, 
They’re not sure. Maybe I
really
can 
get out of this
.
Burns leaves the apartment.
Two guys go back to searching. The other pair stand around watching;
when I ask, one of them tells me they’re locals from the Raleigh-Durham
Fugitive Task Force. What, the Feds thought three of their own weren’t
enough to take down one nonviolent hacker?
Agent Glasgow has glommed onto my briefcase. It’s filled with papers
documenting all my different identities, blank birth certificates, and the like

---

—a one-way ticket to prison. He puts it down on the little dining table and
opens it.
I shout, 
“Hey!”
and the instant he looks up, I slam the cover shut, flip
the latch down and press, spinning the combination wheels and locking the
case.
He shouts at me, 
“You better open that!”
I pay no attention. He steps into the kitchen, pulls open some drawers,
finds a big carving knife, and comes back in with it.
His face has turned a dark shade of red.
He goes to stab the knife into the briefcase, to cut it open. Another
agent, Lathell Thomas, grabs his arm. Everyone else in the room knows that
if Glasgow had cut open the briefcase in the absence of a valid search
warrant, anything found inside might be ruled inadmissible.
Agent Burns has been gone for half an hour. Now he comes back and hands
me a different warrant, all typed out and signed by a Federal judge but with
my address written in by hand. By now the other two agents have already
been searching—illegally—for more than two hours.
Agent Thomas starts to search my closet. I try to shout him away, but he
ignores me and opens the door. After a while, he turns around, holding up a
wallet.
“Well, well, whadda we have here?!” he says with a distinctly Southern
drawl.
He starts pulling out driver’s licenses in all the earlier names I’ve used.
The others stop what they’re doing to look.
“Who’s Eric Weiss?” he asks. “Who’s Michael Stanfill?”
I want to grab everything out of his hands, but I’m afraid it might look
as if I were attacking him—not a good idea in a roomful of guys with
pistols.
Now they know I’m not just a clean, hardworking citizen. But they’ve
come to arrest Kevin Mitnick, and there’s nothing in the wallet that will
help them pin that on me.
Evidently I’ve been playing my part so convincingly—the private
citizen irate at being unfairly harassed—that they’re now discussing
whether they should take me downtown and fingerprint me to prove I really
am
Mitnick and just trying to pull a fast one on them.

---

I say, “That’s a good idea. What time do you want me to be at your
office in the morning?”
They ignore me. Now all three of the Feds go back to searching.
So far my luck is still holding out.
And then it happens: Thomas is going through all the clothes in my closet.
He’s searching my old ski jacket.
From a zippered inner pocket, he pulls out a piece of paper.
“A pay stub,” he announces. “Made out to Kevin Mitnick.”
Agent Thomas shouts, 
“You’re under arrest!”
Not like on television: no one bothers to read me my Miranda rights.
I’ve been so careful, and now a pay stub from a company I worked at
briefly after leaving Beit T’Shuvah, hidden away for years in an overlooked
inner pocket of that ski jacket, has been my undoing.
I can taste bile in my throat and can’t even get to a sink to spit. I tell the
agents I need to take my gastric reflux medicine. They look at the label and
see that it’s been prescribed by a doctor. But they refuse to let me take one.
Incredibly, I’ve held them at bay for three and a half hours. And I’ve
been hiding in plain sight for nearly three years, with the FBI, U.S.
Marshals Service, and Secret Service all looking for me.
But now it’s over.
Agent Thomas glares at me and says, “Mitnick, the jig is up!”
Rather than handcuffing me behind my back, the deputy U.S. Marshal
puts me in cuffs, a belly chain, and leg irons. They walk me out the door.
And I know at that moment that I’m not going away for just a short time.

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