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

Daily News
of Los Angeles,
had carried a story about Poulsen’s case coming up for trial. The piece gave
the names of two others charged as Poulsen coconspirators, Ronald Mark
Austin and Justin Tanner Petersen.
I was familiar with Austin and knew what he looked like; he definitely
wasn’t Eric. But Petersen? Holding my hopes in check and ready to be
disappointed again, I called the DMV and had the clerk read me Petersen’s
physical description.
She said he had brown hair and brown eyes, was six feet tall, and
weighed 145 pounds. I had always thought of Eric’s hair color as being
blond, but otherwise the description fit him to a T.
I had finally cracked his cover. I now knew the real name of the man
who called himself Eric Heinz. And he wasn’t a Fed; he was just a snitch,
trying to trap me and probably as many other hackers as he could to save
his own ass.
After all of that work—all of my thinking and worrying about who and
what Eric was—I was smiling from ear to ear. I was elated. The FBI was so
proud of its global reputation, but hadn’t been able to protect a snitch from
being unmasked by one lone hacker.
With my South Dakota research and my weekend of skiing behind me, it
was time for my first day of work at the law firm. I was shown to a desk in

---

an office inside the computer room, adjacent to the desks of two other
members of the department’s staff, Liz and Darren. Both made me feel
welcome, which I was coming to find was typical of Denver, where the
people seemed laid-back, open, and friendly. Ginger, although a coworker,
had an office on the other side of the computer room; she, too, was very
friendly.
I was starting to get comfortable with my new life, while at the same
time never forgetting that at any moment I might be forced to run to avoid
being locked up again in the tiny coffin of a cell in solitary. Still, working at
a law firm came with some unexpected benefits. The firm occupied five
floors near the top in the posh fifty-story skyscraper known as the Cash
Register building because the top of the building was curved like a cash
register. After hours, I’d log on to the Westlaw account and read law books
in the law library, researching how to get out of the scrape I had gotten
myself into.

---