Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [111]
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 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