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

lend
you a car to take your test in
.
This was what 
I
did, anyway, more than once, and it always worked.
With my new license in hand, I took myself over to the Social Security
office in downtown Las Vegas to get a “replacement” Social Security card,
using my Eric Weiss birth certificate and my driver’s license as my two

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forms of ID. It was a little worrisome: there were signs all over the place
about how it was a crime to obtain a Social Security card using a false
identity. One poster even showed a man in handcuffs. 
Great
.
I presented my credentials and a filled-out application form. It would
take about three weeks for the card to arrive, I was told—much longer than
I felt comfortable staying in Vegas, but I knew I couldn’t get a job
anywhere without that card.
Meanwhile I trotted around to the nearest branch library, where a
librarian was happy to hand me a library card as soon as she finished typing
up the info from my application.
Though my primary focus was on pulling together my new identity and
deciding where I was going to live and work, Danny Yelin, formerly of
Teltec but now freelancing, was still feeding me some work. One job was to
serve a subpoena on a guy who lived in Vegas but was in hiding. Dan
provided me with his last known phone number.
I called the number, an elderly lady answered, and I asked if the man
was there. She said he wasn’t.
I told her, “I owe him some money. I can pay half now and half next
week. But I’m leaving town, so I need you to call him and find out where
he wants to meet me so I can pay him the first half.” And I said I’d call
back in half an hour.
After about ten minutes, I called the Switching Control Center at Centel,
the local phone company. Posing as an internal employee, I had a DMS-100
switch tech do a QCM (Query Call Memory command) on the lady’s
number.
She had made her most recent call about five minutes earlier, to a Motel
6 near the airport. I called and when I was connected to his room, I said I
was from the front desk, and did he still need the roll-away bed he had
asked about. Of course he said he hadn’t asked about a roll-away. I said, “Is
this room 106?”
Sounding annoyed, he said, “No, it’s 212.” I apologized.
My grandmother was kind enough to drive me over there.
My knock was answered by “Yeah.”
“Housekeeping, you have a minute?”
He opened the door. I said, “Are you Mr. ______?”

---

“Yeah.”
I handed him the documents and said, “You are served. Have a nice
day.”
An easy $300. As I signed the proof of service, I smiled to myself and
wondered, 
What would that guy think if he knew he’d just been served a
subpoena by a Federal fugitive?
Once in a while I’d walk to the Sahara to have a meal in the restaurant
where my mom worked, so we could see each other. Other times I’d meet
Gram, my mom, and my mom’s boyfriend, Steve, at one of the other
casinos, where I hoped we could get lost in the crowds. Occasionally, but
not too often, I’d show up at a small casino called the Eureka, where Mom
liked to play video poker after she finished her work shift.
Money was an issue. I had some but not enough. Incredibly, at age
twenty-eight, I still had most of my bar mitzvah money in U.S. Treasury
bonds, which I now cashed in. Between them, my mom and Gram came up
with some more to tide me over until I could get settled and find a job.
Altogether, my bankroll totaled about $11,000—enough to live on until I
could establish my new life.
And “bankroll” was the right word for it: I had the entire amount in
cash, stashed in a wallet inside a man’s carry-on bag that I toted everywhere
with me.
Since I didn’t yet have my Eric Weiss “replacement” Social Security
card, I couldn’t open an account at a credit union or a bank. The hotel I had
chosen didn’t have a room safe like the fancier places. Rent a safety deposit
box at a bank? Couldn’t do that either, for the same reason I couldn’t open
an account: I’d have to show some government-issued ID.
Of course, stashing the money in my hotel room was out of the question.
But how about leaving the wad with Gram? No, because then we’d have to
keep meeting every time I ran out of cash. Not a very good plan if the Feds
started watching her.
Still, if I had it to do over, that’s just what I would have done: left it with
my grandmother, keeping no more than I needed to get by, but enough that I
wouldn’t have to go back to the well very often.

---

Right behind the Stardust Casino and Hotel, near where I was living, there
was an executive-type gym called the Sporting House. (It really 
was
a gym,
though in Nevada, its name might easily get it mistaken for something else.
In fact, the name turned out to be a prophecy: the place is now a strip club,
though under a different name.) The daughter of Las Vegas hotel tycoon
Steve Wynn worked out there, so I figured it must be a cool place.
I signed up for weekly passes, determined to continue my regimen of
working out for two or three hours every day. Besides keeping me in shape,
the workouts offered great opportunities for girl-watching as I jammed to
tunes on my Walkman radio.
One day I finished my session, went back to the locker room, and
discovered that I had forgotten which locker I’d put my stuff in. I walked all
around, checking every locker.
My personal padlock wasn’t on any of them.
I walked around again. Nothing.
I started opening every locker that didn’t have a lock hanging from its
metal door. Finally I found the one that had my clothes inside.
My clothes. But not my bag: it wasn’t there. I felt my heart sink to my
stomach. All my money, all my new identity documents—gone. Stolen. I
had bought an extra-sturdy padlock to use at the gym. Though a
knowledgeable perp would have known a better way, this guy had probably
sneaked in with a massive pair of bolt cutters to get past it. Maybe my
double-heavy-duty padlock itself had been the giveaway that there was
something inside the locker worth protecting. Jesus.
I freaked out. My entire $11,000 stash had been taken. I was penniless,
with no income, facing the challenge of traveling to a new city, renting an
apartment, and paying my way until I could land a job and start banking a
paycheck. I felt like a total idiot for having walked around carrying all my
money in a bag, practically 
asking
to be robbed.
When I told the on-duty gym manager, I got scant sympathy. She made
some lame attempt to make me feel better by telling me that there had been
a rash of similar break-ins at the gym recently. 
Now
she was telling me!
Then she added insult to injury by offering me four complimentary day
passes to the gym. Not four months, not even one month—four 
days!
Naturally, I couldn’t risk reporting the loss to the police.
The worst part was telling my mom and Gram about my unhappy
predicament. I couldn’t stand the thought of causing them any more anxiety

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or pain. They had always been there for me, ready to help me out in any
circumstances because they loved me so much. (That’s not to say they
didn’t let me know often enough when they were upset with me, but they
were both able to show anger without withdrawing love.) And now they
came through for me again, offering to scrape together another $5,000
between them whenever I was ready for it. I’d say this was definitely a gift
I didn’t deserve.
For diversion, I was going to the movies and sometimes playing
blackjack at one of the casinos. I had read Kenny Uston’s book on card
counting, and found I was pretty good at keeping track of the high cards—
though I somehow rarely managed to walk away from the table with much
more than I had laid out when I first sat down.
While I was waiting for my new Social Security card to arrive, I went
back to the DMV to report my lost driver’s license and got an immediate
replacement.
In the three weeks while I waited for my replacement Social Security
card, I acquired as many other forms of identification as I could. By the
time I was ready to leave Vegas, in addition to my library card, I also had
cards for the Las Vegas Athletic Club, Blockbuster Video, as well as a bank
ATM card, and a Nevada Health Card that food servers and other casino
employees had to have.
The local Clark County library became a familiar hangout for me, poring
over business and travel magazines in search of the destination I would
head for as soon as my new identity was complete. My short list included
Austin and Tampa and a few other towns, but the final decision was easy.
Not long before, 
Money
magazine had rated Denver as one of the best
places in the country to live. That sounded good. It wasn’t too far away, it
seemed to have a good job market for computer work, it was well rated for
quality of life, and settling down there would give me my first chance to
experience real