Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [33]
They sent an in-house memo around that announced, “Please welcome new employee Kevin Mitnick, who starts next week.”
Remember that article in the Los Angeles Times, which covered my juvenile arrest and printed my name, a violation of law as well as a violation of my privacy because I was a minor? Well, one of the people at Security Pacific National Bank remembered that article, too.
The day before I was to start, I got a strange call from Sandra Lambert, the lady who’d hired me and who founded the security organization Information Systems Security Association (ISSA). The conversation was actually more like an interrogation:
SL: “Do you play Hearts?”
Me: “The card game?”
SL: “Yes.”
I had a sinking feeling that the party was over.
SL: “Are you a ham radio operator with the call sign WA6VPS?”
Me: “Yes.”
SL: “Do you dig around in the Dumpsters behind office buildings?”
Me: Uh-oh. “Only when I’m hungry.”
My attempt at humor fell. She said good-bye and hung up. I received a phone call from Human Resources the next day withdrawing the employment offer. Once again, my past had come back to bite me in the ass.
Sometime later, media outlets received a press release from Security Pacific National Bank announcing a $400 million loss for the quarter. The release was a phony—it wasn’t really from the bank, which had not in fact lost money in that quarter. Of course the higher-ups at the bank were sure I was behind it. I didn’t learn about any of this until months later, at a court hearing, when prosecutors told the judge that I had committed this malicious act. Thinking back, I remembered telling De Payne that my job offer had been pulled. Years afterward, I asked him if he had been behind that press release. He vehemently denied it. The fact is, I didn’t do it. That wasn’t my style: I’ve never practiced any kind of vicious retribution.
But the phony press release became another part of the Myth of Kevin Mitnick.
Still, I had Bonnie in my life, one of the best things that had ever happened to me. But have you ever felt that something was so good it couldn’t possibly last?
SEVEN
Hitched in Haste
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Bonnie recently said that she still remembers “how much fun Kevin was, how sweet he was.”
I felt the same about her. There had been other girls I’d had crushes on, but Bonnie was a first for me in how serious I felt, a first in how much I cared. We enjoyed so many of the same things, even down to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that we’d drive out of our way to pick up at a 7-Eleven on our way home. You probably know the satisfaction when you’re just comfortable and happy being in one particular person’s company. There was no doubt that having her there for me, after those two rapid-fire job losses, was exactly what the doctor ordered. I was spending so much time at her place that I began moving some of my clothes there. We never really decided, Okay, let’s live together. It just sort of happened.
We loved biking together. We loved going to the beach with a bottle of wine. We loved hiking in the Chantry Flat, in Arcadia, a beautiful area with waterfalls that’s right in Los Angeles County but feels like being in a forest—really cool, such a refreshing escape for a pale guy like me who sat in front of a computer all day and all night.
I didn’t even mind that she was a lazy housekeeper, with a big pile of her dirty clothes usually occupying space on the bedroom floor. I’ve never been a neat freak like my parents, but I do like things tidy and organized. The two of us were alike in so many other ways that when it came to the condition of the apartment, I just closed my eyes.
Since I didn’t have a job, I signed up for an extension course at UCLA in Westwood, not far from us. Bonnie went with me to register.
But it was a deception—the first time in our relationship that I was, in a sense, cheating on her. I’d go out three evenings