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particular qualifications listed. As a rule, I’d read the qualifications they
were looking for and tailor a résumé that showed I had around 90 percent of
the skills on the company’s wish list. If I claimed every sought-after skill, I
figured the HR people or the head of IT might wonder,
If he’s that good,
why is he applying for such a low-level job?
My résumé would list only a single previous job so I wouldn’t have to
create more than one past-job reference. The trick here was to keep copies
of all the material I sent out so I’d know what I had written when someone
called me in for an interview. Along with the résumé, I’d include a well-
polished cover letter to introduce myself.
My skill at writing these phony résumés and letters paid off within a
couple of weeks. I was invited for an interview at, of all places, the local
office of a prominent international law firm, Holme, Roberts and Owen,
which had offices in Denver, Salt Lake City, Boulder, London, and
Moscow.
Dressed in a suit and tie and looking, I thought, perfectly suitable for a
job in an upscale law firm, I was shown into a conference room to meet
with the IT manager, a very friendly lady named Lori Sherry.
I’m good at interviews, but this one was a little more exciting than most
as I struggled not to be distracted: Lori was really attractive. But—bummer
—she was wearing a wedding band.
She started off with what must be a standard opening: “Tell me a little
about yourself.”
I tried for charming and charismatic, the style that the remake of
Ocean’s Eleven
would capture a few years later. “I broke up with my
girlfriend and wanted to get away. The company I was working for offered
me more money to stay, but I knew it would be better to start fresh in a
different city.”
“Why Denver?”
“Oh, I’ve always loved the Rocky Mountains.”
So, a plausible reason for leaving my last job. Check that one off the list.
For half an hour we went through all the standard things about my short-
and long-term goals and other typical interview topics. She took me on a
tour of the computer room, and then I was given a four- or five-page written
test on my system administrator skills, mostly on the Unix and VMS
operating systems. I gave a couple of wrong answers, again so I wouldn’t
look overqualified.
I thought the interview had gone well. For job references, I had set up a
phony company in Las Vegas, Green Valley Systems, and then rented a
mailbox and signed up with an answering service that used live operators,
who had instructions to tell callers, “No one is available to take your call
right now,” and then ask them to leave a message. After the interview, I
started calling the service every hour. The next day, there was a message for
me: Lori wanted to speak with Green Valley’s IT director. Excellent!
I had already scouted a hotel with a large lobby that offered acoustics
like an office area, and checked that there was a pay phone out of the stream
of traffic. (I couldn’t chance calling her on my cloned cell phone because
the call would show up on the real cell customer’s bill.) Lowering my voice
an octave or so and adopting a bit of a pompous tone, I provided Eric Weiss
with a very favorable recommendation.
I got a job offer a few days later at a salary of $28,000—nothing to brag
about, but enough to meet my needs.
I was supposed to start work two weeks later. Great: that would give me
time to find an apartment, fill it with a load of rental furniture, and then dive
into an important project that had been on my mind. My Eric Weiss identity
was safe and verifiable. Still, there was already a real Eric Weiss walking
around in Portland with the same Social Security number, birth date, and
alma mater. That was okay for the time being, since the other Eric lived far
enough away that our paths weren’t likely to cross. But I wanted an identity
I could safely use for the rest of my life.
Nineteen states, including California and South Dakota, at the time had
“open” death records—meaning the documents were a matter of public
record, available to anyone. Those states hadn’t yet caught on to how easy
they were making things for someone like me. There were other states that
would have been more convenient for me to get to, but South Dakota
seemed so remote that I figured there was much less chance some other guy
in my situation might search its records and come up with one or more of
the identities I had found.
Before setting out, a bit of preparation. My first stop was King Soopers
supermarket, where there was a machine on which you could enter your
own text and instantly print out twenty business cards for five bucks. My
new cards read:
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