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They talked about needing ideas about how they might be able to set a trap for me, something that would give them hard evidence against me that they could then turn over to the FBI. They were wondering what I might try next, so they could have something in place to catch me red-handed.

Somebody suggested a plot for trapping me that was way stupid. I was dying to bust into their conversation and say, “I don’t think that would work. This Mitnick guy is pretty clever. You never know—he could be listening to us right now!”

Yes, I had done other things every bit as gutsy and reckless as that, but this time I managed to resist the temptation.

On the other hand, I was less resistant to doing something gutsy when asked by someone in need. One Thursday at the beginning of June, on a day when I hadn’t gone in to work because I had some errands I needed to do, I got a frantic phone call from Mark Kasden: Armand Grant, the head of Teltec, had just been arrested. His son Michael and Kasden were trying to raise bail, but they’d been told it might take as much as a day and a half after they posted bail before he would be released.

I said, “No problem. Let me know when that’s done, ’cause once he gets bail, I’ll get him walked out of there in about fifteen minutes.”

Kasden said, “That’s impossible.”

But knowing how law enforcement people respected rank, I just called another jail in northern Los Angeles—Wayside—and asked, “Who’s the lieutenant on duty there this afternoon?” They gave me his name. Then I called the Men’s Central Jail, where Grant was being held. I already knew the direct-dial internal number for the Warrants Division. When a lady answered, I asked for the extension at Receiving and Discharge. For somebody like me, in a situation like this, there were advantages in my actually having been through the jail system. I told her I was Lieutenant So-and-so (using the name I had just been given) at Wayside. “You have an inmate whose bail is supposed to be posted. He’s working as an informant on a case for us, and I need to get him out immediately” and gave her Grant’s name.

The sound of computer keys came over the telephone. “We just got the order, but we haven’t entered it yet.”

I said I wanted to talk to her sergeant. When he came on the line, I gave him the same pitch and said, “Sergeant, can you do me a personal favor?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Once the man’s bond is posted, can you personally walk him through the whole process and get him out as soon as possible?”

He answered, “No problem, sir.”

I got a call from Michael Grant twenty minutes later to say that his father was out.

TWENTY-TWO

Detective Work

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If I could help Grant with so little effort, how come I still didn’t have the lowdown on Wernle? Fortunately, I was about to unlock that secret.

Eric kept talking about having to go to work, but he would always change the subject whenever I asked what he did.

So who was signing his paychecks? Maybe hacking into his bank account would give me the answer. Since Eric’s name wasn’t on his rental application or any of his utility bills, I’d look for an account in the Wernle name.

What bank was he using? Banks, of course, guard their customer information carefully. But they also need to ensure that authorized employees are able to obtain information from different branches.

In those days, most banks used a system that allowed an employee to identify himself to a fellow employee at another branch by providing a code that changed every day. For example, Bank of America used five daily codes, labeled “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” and “E,” each of which was assigned a different four-digit number. An employee calling another branch for information would be challenged to give the correct number for code A or code B or whatever. This was the banking industry’s idea of foolproof security.

With reverse social engineering, I easily got around it.

My plan had several layers. First thing