Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace (31 page)

context of high-tech computer crimes. The other hackers hear that Berman has even tracked down Pumpkin Pete and convinced him to testify.

The first skirmish is a pre-trial hearing that stretches over a two-day period in March of 1993. The purpose of the hearing is to get a ruling from the judge about the admissibility of certain portions of the evidence that the government has gathered. Lawyers for the three remaining defendants try to convince the judge, Richard Owen, to throw out much of the evidence that the government has gathered. The defense attorneys argue that the information from the DNRs was obtained illegally. They argue that as far back as the summer of 1989, the phone company was acting as a de facto agent of the government, gathering information and funneling it straight to the Secret Service. Because the phone company had been working with the Secret Service, the DNRs should not have been placed on the boys' phones without a court order, they argue.

But then Fishbein stands up to refute the argument: 'The statute says that DNRs can be installed to find out about computer intrusions of their systems. New York Telephone was the victim. The New York Telephone investigation began well before the Secret Service investigation, and it was done purely to detect fraud and abuse of the system. "

Judge Owen sides with the prosecution. He appears to be exasperated by the defendants. Owen likens the phone company to a private citizen who has been robbed of property.

"If a private citizen believes that his stolen property is in an apartment, and he busts in and gets it, and turns it over to the government, then his actions aren't at the behest of the government, " Owen says.

Owen's ruling is a blow to the defense, because it means that every bit of information from the DNRs that damning

stream of numbers, now all typed out in neat chart form

can be introduced to a jury.

Attorneys for the defendants also argue a second point, that statements made by Eli and Paul to Secret Service agents should be suppressed, because they were obtained illegally. Paul testifies that he was intimidated by agents who searched his dorm room in 1990, and days later he was coerced into giving a statement about his hacking activities.

Owen is skeptical.

"You're not shy, " the judge tells Paul, who, truth be told, was blushing mightily at the moment. "You've got a title of Scorpion. There's a little fellow with a big stinger in his tail who gave you that. "

Over the years, Owen has developed a reputation as a tough-talking, pro-prosecution judge. He is easily irritated by defense attorneys' assertions that the authorities violate the civil rights of virtually every defendant who stands in his courtroom. Owen has handled too many high-profile cases to list them all, but a couple of years before the MOD boys set foot in his courtroom, Owen sentenced mobsters Tony "Ducks" Corallo, Anthony Salerno, and Carmine Persico to a hundred years each of jail time. He had also presided over the enormously complicated racketeering and fraud trial of a lawyer accused of taking payoffs from the notorious Bronx defense contractor, Wedtech.

The boys standing before Owen's bench are more of the same defendants accused of breaking federal law.

Soon after Owen ruled against the defendants' efforts to limit evidence against them, Paul and Eli decide to plead guilty.

"It's pretty clear, the way things are going, that this is the only choice, " Paul says.

At his sentencing, Paul stands before the judge, wearing a suit. A rubber band holds his blond hair in a ponytail that hangs halfway to his waist. "1 realize I broke the law.... I didn't do it to make money or hurt anyone, " he says, apologizing.

"A lot of it was for intelligent Curiosity, to see how computers were operating. "

Paul asks for leniency. "I ask your honor to give me a chance to prove I can offer something to society. "

The judge looks sternly at him. "One problem I have with all the young people in this case is you're all so bright. That's really what distresses the deuce out of me. "

Paul and Eli each get a sentence of six months in a federal penitentiary, followed by six months' home detention.

Owen sentences John, too.

On a somber, rainy day in the summer of 1993, with his mother, stoic, sitting on a hard wooden bench behind him, John stands in a charcoal gray suit before Owen. He says, "I'm real sorry for the things I've done. "

John says that he's grown up a lot in the past year and a half since the raids. He's been having a lot of fun, actually, working as a standup comedian in local clubs. He's also in college now, a film major at Brooklyn College. Filmmaking has become his new obsession. He's been making films on the subways and everyone loves them. The films are funny and they make people laugh. In fact, some of his professors have written to the judge, asking for leniency, because John shows such promise.

"I want to do a film project, " John tells the judge. He wants to do an anti-hacking, public-service-type announcement. Put his various talents to good use.

The judge is impassive. John clears his throat and continues. "I've always tried to please my mother and I've let her down.... I guess I'm rambling.... My mother stood behind me. I've accepted completely that I would have to face jail time for what I've done. "

Owen listens, then sits silent for some minutes. Then he says: "He went to the finest honors high school this city has to offer. He was in the swim with some of the brightest men and women.... A kid with computer gifts can get out of Stuyvesant and go to any college he wants to. He had before him the opportunity to go absolutely to the limit. " The judge looks at John. "You had the world practically given to you. "

Who in the courtroom besides John and his mother, Larraine, chokes on that weird statement?

Owen takes the world away. John won't be going back to college in the fall, because the judge sentences him to a year in jail, followed by three years of supervised release and two hundred hours of community service. Oh yes, and a fine of $50.

Then Owen looks over at John's lawyer and asks, "When does your client want to surrender?"

So now Mark was the last holdout. Meanwhile, Julio's sentencing was delayed. Everyone figured that was because Julio had agreed to testify against Mark at trial and would subsequently be rewarded with a suspended sentence. Julio was making regular trips to the U. S. Attorney's office, meeting with Fishbein and Berman, helping them build a case against Mark. Over and over again, Julio reviewed the evidence and the questions he'd be asked on the stand during Mark's trial.

He would be the government's star witness. Mark taught me everything I know....

Mark started to prepare for trial, during long meetings with Larry Schoenbach and Schoenbach's partner. He is becoming intimately familiar with the mountain of evidence against him. He is coming to believe that his chances of an acquittal are next to nothing.

And yet, Mark believed he had taken a position that he couldn't back away from.

The EFF was no longer actively involved in his case

a chastened Godwin briefly lost his job partly because he pushed

his bosses for a commitment to the case. Godwin backed off after he was reinstated as staff counsel. Barlow felt bad about the whole thing. He believed that the mixed signals the EFF had sent had turned the MOD case into a bloody casualty of the EFF's struggle to define itself as an organization. He viewed the foundation and its founders as deeply divided (he himself has never known whether he wanted to be a Republican or an outlaw, and he wondered if Mitch would rather be a guru or a CEO). Barlow thought that by backing away from the case, the EFF might be betraying its own roots.

But by now, events were beginning to overtake everyone.

Mark's lackluster participation has soured Larry Schoenbach as well. Mark was late to meetings. Mark skipped meetings.

Mark was taciturn and sullen. If this was how he behaved when dealing with his lawyer, how would he look to a jury when he took the stand in his own defense?

The trial was scheduled to begin July 5.

During the last week in June, Fishbein and Berman put the finishing touches to their case. Berman rehearsed his opening statement to the jury.

Then, on Thursday, five days before the start of trial, Mark's lawyer called Fishbein and said, "We really should talk about a plea. "

The next morning, Friday, Mark stood in court and echoed the words of his friends: "I plead guilty, your honor. "

Why plead guilty now? Schoenbach said it made no sense. Had Mark gone to trial and lost, it is unlikely he would have earned more time in jail than he did by taking a plea so late in the game.

But Mark has told people that by pleading on the eve of trial, he got something none of the other defendants did: a complete understanding of what his defense would have been. He saw every last plank of support laid out.

And in the end, what he'd seen scared him.

The hackers who arrive at the Citicorp building on the first Friday of February wear heavy hiking boots, thick-soled turf crunchers, and kicked-around, black-leather shoes that lace up, up, up their calves. Of course, if it were July, they wouldn't be dressed any differently. This is the uniform.

It is 1994 now, and tonight's meeting is the first gathering in nearly five years at which no one from MOD is present.

Dozens of hackers are here, ranging in age from fourteen to forty, far more muffle-jacketed attendees than in the days of early 1989.

The world has changed since that heady time when Mark and Paul and Eli and John and Julio all somehow found each other, all somehow coalesced.

In fact, it's as if the rest of the world has caught up. What the MOD boys did for fun recreationally cruising across continents of wires

has become a national pastime. "Net surfing" is a bigger fad than CB radio ever was, and people everywhere are buying their first computers and hooking up to online services that connect them to the world and one another. My mom. Your mom. Everybody's entranced.

So it's no wonder that the new numbers of an eager generation are filling the Citicorp atrium. Tonight, there's a hole where Mark used to be, a spot by the pay phones where he liked to stand patiently while a group of respectful proteges would gather to ask him highly technical questions. Tonight you will not see his familiar blue-and-white bandanna, you will not hear the boom-and-heave of his voice you will not wonder how many bowls of homemade chicken soup he will consume later downtown. Tonight, Mark is far away.

Mark had arrived at the gates of Pennsylvania's Schuylkill Prison late one night in January, right after a snowstorm, and was whisked inside before his friends could say good-bye. He started serving a year-long sentence, the longest stint in jail that any of the MOD boys would serve. The sentencing judge said that Mark by his actions chose to be a messenger for the hacking community. And so the judge had said he had no recourse but to send a message back.

Hundreds of people had sent letters to the judge, urging him to be lenient. The letters came from an electronic community that had flourished with Mark's help. The community is called Echo, which stands for East Coast Hang Out. Echo was a local New York City bulletin board before Mark was hired as a system administrator, a job he took while waiting to be sentenced. Mark quickly connected Echo to the Internet, the worldwide collection of more than fifteen thousand interconnected computer networks.

The world of the Internet, for newcomers, is a fabulously confusing place. In other words, a perfect place for Mark Abene to de-mystify. And the members of Echo

lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, writers

came to rely on Mark as their

instructor and travel guide. He found, as lucky adults often do, creative work that consumed him. And that paid him a wage. His job will be waiting when he gets out of jail.

On the day Mark drove off to prison, many of his friends on Echo add the name "Optik" to their online names. Someone printed up buttons that say PHREE PHIBER OPTIK and The Village Voice ran a feature calling Mark the first martyr of the information age. A kind of vigil is held every day, online, while he's in jail. A list is set up on Echo of things Mark needs, and people send him magazines and books and hundreds of letters.

On Echo he had also found a girlfriend. She misses him desperately and every day posts a message on Echo, updating his new friends on his condition and mood in jail. She says she just wants her Phiber back home, sitting in the bathtub with her and catching the Milk Duds she tosses right into his mouth.

Paul is in jail, too. He's serving six months at a federal prison in Lewisburg, not so far away from Mark. When he gets out, he will also have a job waiting for him, working for some guy who runs a business called The Missing Person's Bureau, which tracks missing people. There were a lot of people who wanted to hire Paul. The computer industry is not afraid of his felony conviction. The industry is filled with rebels, old-line hackers who understand how a brilliant kid could take a wrong turn and still be a brilliant kid. Don't worry about Paul.

John was about to get out of jail, thinner, more muscular, in the best shape he's ever been in his whole life. He thinks about college and asks friends to send him movie reviews. He can't wait to get back to his life in the film studies program he was enrolled in at Brooklyn College. He's got lots of ideas for films he wants to make.

Eli also has a job waiting for him when he gets out of Allenwood, the most famous of federal prisons. He'll program computers for a broadcasting company in Manhattan, working for a guy who has a computer science degree and who thinks Eli has a great amount of potential.

They had all finally managed to learn how things work. They had all grown up and figured out how to fit themselves into a world that wasn't ready for their skills or their curiosity when they were younger.

And Julio? He and Allen (who wasn't even indicted) were the only ones who didn't get jail sentences. The government was so thankful that Julio offered to testify against Mark at trial that he escaped with a suspended sentence. He's been working for his uncle, who runs a dental lab, setting up computers.