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

“Who is it?”
When I didn’t answer, he opened the door a
crack. “Oh, hi, Brian,” he said in a sleepy, irritated voice.
I tried my best to hide my anxiety. “Did you let anyone into my
apartment?”
His answer was a stunner, something I could never have expected:
“No, but the cops and the Secret Service busted down your door. The
Seattle Police left a search warrant and a business card saying you should

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call them right away.”
Starting to wake up enough to be truly annoyed now, he added, “And
you’re going to pay for the door—
right?
”
“Yeah, sure.”
I told him I was going to call them right away.
Sweating, with a sour taste of panic in my mouth and a sinking feeling
in my stomach, I bolted back down the stairs and through the alley, looking
for some sign of trouble—an unmarked car, movement on the roof,
anything.
Nothing. Nobody.
One small blessing: if it was the Seattle Police, not the FBI, then they
were looking for the Brian Merrill who had been making unauthorized cell
phone calls, not for fugitive hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Drews had said the Seattle Police and Secret Service searched my place
and then just left. Surely they wouldn’t be lame enough to toss my place
without staying around to make the arrest.
I walked away fast, knowing I didn’t dare run, sure the manager must
already be on the phone calling the cops or Feds to report that I had shown
up and then split.
Still carrying the briefcase I had thankfully left the house with hours
earlier—it contained all my paperwork for new identities—I was expecting
to see a police or unmarked car any second. I dropped my bag of groceries
into someone’s trash.
My heart was starting to beat faster and faster. I walked as fast as I could
without breaking into a jog, staying away from major streets until I was a
couple blocks away from my apartment. I kept thinking about all the stuff in
my briefcase, including those blank but certified birth certificates from
South Dakota.
But I couldn’t ditch those documents. I would need them more than ever
now. My new “permanent” identity had just flown out the window, forever
useless. So I hung on to the briefcase. I was sure that a team of Feds was
lurking nearby waiting for me. In one of the parked cars? Behind some
trees? In the doorway of an apartment building down the block?
My mouth started to get very dry, as if I hadn’t drunk any water in a few
days. I was so nervous I was beginning to feel dizzy. Sweat was dripping
down my face.

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I reached a bar, huffing and puffing, way out of place among the noisy,
laughing people partying, drinking it up, having a good time. I hid in a stall
in the men’s room. I wanted to call my mom but didn’t dare use the cell
phone, so I just sat there thinking out my options. Call a cab and get the hell
out of the area as soon as possible? The Secret Service could be driving
around looking for me. I just wanted to disappear into the crowd.
When I had rested long enough to get my breath back, I took to the
sidewalk again, looking for a taxi to take me out of the area. A bus rolled
past.
A bus! A ticket out of the neighborhood!
I ran my ass off to catch it at the stop in the next block. Where it was
going didn’t matter. Just away from here.
I stayed on for an hour, to the end of the line, then got off and walked in
the cool air to clear my head.
At a 7-Eleven, I called my mom’s pager from the pay phone, sending her
a code 3—“Emergency.” I waited, giving her time to get up, get dressed,
drive to a casino, and page me back to let me know where she was. After
about forty minutes, my pager buzzed, showing me the phone number for
Caesar’s Palace. I called the hotel and had her paged, waiting impatiently
until she picked up.
As you might imagine, it wasn’t easy to tell her about my close call, and
that I didn’t dare go back to my apartment. I was depressed, but it could
have been worse, I pointed out: I could be sitting in some jail cell.
When we hung up, I picked a motel from the Yellow Pages with an
address in downtown Seattle near Pike Place Market, where the first
Starbucks opened. I called a cab and had the driver stop at an ATM, where I
withdrew the maximum amount, $500.
The name I put on the registration form at the motel was Eric Weiss, the
old identity that I still had documents for in my briefcase.
The next morning I would be out of there, gone from Seattle without a
trace—I hoped.
I went to bed feeling a huge sense of loss. The only possessions I still
had were the clothes on my back, a couple of things at the dry cleaners, and
the briefcase full of identity documents. Everything else was still in that
apartment.
I was an early riser the next morning.

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The raid had been at night. I was hoping that the Feds had knocked off
after filing the paperwork and logging all the evidence—that they hadn’t
bothered to start looking through my computer or papers, where they would
have found a receipt from the dry cleaners and a checkbook showing where
I kept my stash of cash.
First stop, because it opened early, was the dry cleaners, to pick up the
only clothes I would have besides the jeans, black leather jacket, and Hard
Rock T-shirt I was wearing.
The bank opened at 9:00 a.m., and guess who was the first customer
through the door? I closed out my checking account—it had only about four
thousand dollars in it, but I was going to need every penny of that for my
next disappearing act.
The local cops had grabbed my laptop, floppy disks, my second radio
scanner, computer peripherals, and unencrypted backup tapes. It could be
only a matter of days before they figured out that Brian Merrill, the cell
phone cloner, was really Kevin Mitnick, the Feds’ most wanted hacker.
Or did they already know?
For any clever social engineer, the answer to a question like that is never
hard to come by.
Placing a call to the office of the Seattle district attorney, I asked which DA
handled electronic fraud cases.
“Ivan Orton,” I was told.
Calling Orton’s secretary, I told her, “This is Special Agent Robert
Terrance, Secret Service. Do you have a copy of the search warrant and
affidavit on the cell phone case from last night?”
“No, you’ll have to call Records,” and she recited the number.
The lady in Records asked me for the address where the search had
taken place. When I told her, she said, “Oh, yes, I have it right here.”
“Great. I’m in the field, can you please fax me a copy?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t have a fax machine in Records.”
That didn’t faze me. “No problem,” I said. “I’ll call you back.”
No fax machine in the Records Office? Incredible. We’re talking 1994
here;