Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [104]
Well, for the moment, I thought it would be comforting to be with my mom and Gram for Thanksgiving, so I called my Probation Officer, Frank Gulla, and asked for permission, half expecting to be turned down. Surprisingly, he granted the permission, so long as I returned by December 4.
I would later learn that back on November 6, the Probation Department had written to the court asking for a bench warrant for my arrest, citing my accessing of a Pacific Bell security agent’s voicemail and my associating with Lewis De Payne. The bench warrant was issued the next day, setting bail at $25,000.
So why did Gulla give me permission to leave town, instead of telling me I needed to come in and see him? I haven’t figured that out to this day.
When you’re on Federal parole, probation, or supervised release, you need to check in with the local Probation Department whenever you travel to a different Federal district. The morning after I arrived in Las Vegas, I headed downtown to the Bonneville Avenue office to check in.
Natural instinct told me I should make sure there wasn’t anything going on that I would want to know about before I got there. I just had a gut feeling that something might be up.
In the car, I had a ham radio that I’d modified so I could transmit and receive outside the frequency bands authorized for amateur radio operators. I tuned to one of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s tactical frequencies.
I listened for half an hour or so to pick up the protocol a cop would use when he wanted to ask if there was an outstanding warrant on the guy driving a car he had stopped. He’d say, “I need a 10-28 on license plate ____.”
At the same time, I was taking mental note of the identifiers the cops used when calling Dispatch—for example, “1 George 21.” The Dispatch operator would respond, “Go ahead, 1 George 21.”
What did they say when they were taking time for lunch or whatever? A call would come over the air that included phrases like, “Code 7, Denny’s, Rancho Drive.”
I waited ten minutes, then pressed the Transmit key on my radio, used the same call sign as some cops who were at that moment enjoying lunch at Denny’s, and said, “I need a 10-28 on California license plate…,” and gave my own plate number.
After a moment, the control operator said, “Are you clear 440?”
My heart began racing. What did “440” mean? I had no idea.
I radioed back, “Stand by.”
Using my cloned cell phone, I called the police in the nearby town of Henderson and said, “This is Special Agent Jim Casey, DEA. I’m in Las Vegas with the Multi-Agency Narcotics Task Force. I need to know what ‘440’ means in Las Vegas.”
“That’s a wanted person.”
Oh, shit! So “Are you clear 440?” meant “Are you standing away from the wanted person, so I can tell you what he’s wanted for?” The Las Vegas police were holding a warrant for me that cited my car’s license tags.
If I walked into the Probation Office, it was extremely likely I’d be put in handcuffs and sent back to prison! I felt great relief that I’d dodged that bullet, but I was washed with fear.
I was just coming up on the entry to the Sahara Hotel. I swung into their parking lot, parked, and walked away from the car.
The Sahara. It couldn’t have been any more convenient. My mom happened to be working as a waitress in the coffee shop. I sauntered through the glitz and glitter of the casino, past the eager, quietly rowdy players throwing dice at the craps tables and the hordes of silver-haired, dead-eyed women feeding the slot machines.
I sat at a table until my mom’s shift ended and she could drive me to her house. When I told her and my grandmother that I was very likely on my way back to prison, the family was thrown into turmoil. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a happy, festive occasion, but there was no happiness for us that year, no giving of thanks.
Over the next few days, instead of going into the Probation Office, I made two after-hours phone calls there, leaving messages on the answering machine that I was reporting in by phone because my mom was sick and I couldn’t leave her.