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

for his own curiosity
. He won the
appeal, his convictions were reversed, and he never went to prison.
With such a clear legal precedent, I believed we had a chance to beat the
government’s case. I eagerly told my attorney that I wanted to go to trial.
The strategy I proposed was this: I’d admit to hacking but argue that I was
not guilty of wire or computer fraud because, like Czubinski, I had done it
merely to satisfy my own curiosity.
Randolph agreed that Czubinski’s case set a perfect precedent for my
defense. But there was a bigger problem. Randolph hesitated slightly before
he told me what it was; I could see he was trying to be tactful. It seemed to
be time for him to say something that, until now, had been left unsaid.
One of the government prosecutors had been urging my attorney for
weeks to persuade me to take a plea. Over the last few days, he’d even
resorted to ultimatums: if I didn’t agree to plead guilty and settle the case,
he warned, the government would put me through a revolving door of
criminal trials. If they lost in one jurisdiction, they’d try me in another; if
they won, they’d press for the maximum sentence. It wouldn’t matter to
them whether or not they got convictions because they’d have me locked up
without bail the whole time.
I was ready to fight. But now my own attorney, Randolph, was telling
me, as tactfully as he could, “I think you should take the plea.”
And then he explained: “If we go to trial, you’ll have to testify. And that
will leave you open to cross-examination about other things…”

---

Those “other things” were all the wild stories that had circulated for
years about my hacking, the rumors that I had gotten into the CIA, the FBI,
and even NORAD. Not to mention the many other things I 
had
done in my
hacking career but not been charged with: manipulating phone company
switches all across America; getting information from the California DMV;
tapping into an FBI informant’s phone call; listening to voicemail messages
of Pacific Bell security agents. And so much more.
I could see what Randolph meant. During the cross-examination by the
prosecutor, I could open myself up to other charges because the government
could ask me anything related to my hacking activities if I took the stand.
We didn’t really want to get into all of that.
So I took the plea, with terms 
much
better than those of the original plea
I had been offered nearly three years earlier.
As for my conditions of supervised release, for three years I wouldn’t be
permitted to touch any electronic devices, such as a computer, cell phone,
fax machine, pager, word processor, and so on, without the prior written
permission of my Probation Officer. Even worse, I was forbidden to access
a computer 
through a third party
. The government didn’t even want me to
make an airline reservation without asking permission first. So how, I
wondered, was I supposed to find work? I also wouldn’t be able to act as a
consultant in any computer-related activity. The many, many conditions
placed on my release seemed unreasonably harsh, and a number of them
were so broad that I worried I might violate them inadvertently.
The government set these broad conditions not only to punish me, but
also because they were trying to cover all the bases to prevent me from
finding loopholes, ways around the restrictions.
In the end, on March 16, 1999, I signed the deal. The prosecution this
time was willing to go with a “binding” plea agreement, which meant that
Judge Pfaelzer would have to sentence me to the agreed terms, or I could
withdraw my plea and go to trial. I pled guilty to seven counts handpicked
by government prosecutors in Northern and Southern California (other
jurisdictions also wanted a piece of me), which included wire fraud (social-
engineering people over the phone into sending me source code), computer
fraud (copying source code), possession of access devices (passwords), and

---

interception of data communications (installing network sniffers to grab
passwords).
During the settlement discussions, the prosecution asked for $1.5
million in restitution payments. Fortunately, Federal law required the court
to take into account my ability to pay, so even though Judge Pfaelzer surely
wanted to come down hard on me, she had to take my potential earnings
into consideration. Because of my onerous conditions of release, the
Probation Office calculated that I would be able to get only a minimum-
wage job like flipping burgers. So Judge Pfaelzer based the amount of my
restitution on the Probation Office’s projection of my earning minimum
wage over a three-year period. Instead of the millions proposed earlier, I
was ordered to pay $4,125.
After my release, I asked my dad to put my Lompoc Prison ID card up for
auction on eBay for me. When eBay administrators yanked it down because
it didn’t meet the company’s “community standards,” they did me a huge
favor. That act generated a media feeding frenzy. The story was quirky
enough that it became a top news item on CNN. I then put the card on
Amazon, where it was once again yanked for the 
same
reason (thank you,
Amazon!). A guy in Europe finally snapped it up for a whopping $4,000—
way more than I’d ever expected to get.
With a big smile on my face, I brought the proceeds into the Probation
Office, along with the extra $125, and paid off the restitution order. I like to
think that made my Lompoc ID a sort of “get out of jail free” card.
The government was furious over that little stunt: the Bureau of Prisons
publicly stated that the card was “our property,” and tried to figure out a
way to seize the money. I never heard another word about it.
On August 9, 1999, I was officially sentenced to an additional forty-six
months in custody, consecutive to the twenty-two months I received for
violating my supervised release and making free cellular phone calls. Since
I’d already spent four and a half years in jail waiting, my time was almost
up.
Several weeks later I was transferred to the Federal Correctional
Institution in Lompoc, where I was met by a trio of men in suits. I’d find
out later that they were the unit manager, the captain (the head of security

---

for the prison), and an associate warden. I knew this probably wasn’t what
happened to every arriving prisoner.
It turned out they were there to warn me to stay away from computers
and telephones. If I started messing around with the equipment, they said,
“There will be hell to pay!”
Then I was told I had to find a job in the prison within seventy-two
hours, or they would find one for me—“and it won’t be very pleasant.”
A conversation with another prisoner turned up the interesting news that
there was an opening for an inmate in the Telecom Department.
“Do you have any experience with phones, Mitnick?” the supervisor
asked.
“Not too much,” I said. “I know how to plug it into a jack. But don’t
worry, I’m a quick learner.”
He offered to train me.
For two days, my prison job at Lompoc was installing and repairing the
prison’s telephones.
On the third day, the PA system blared,