The American Connection

gift for working out the copy protection parameters, which was a first step in bypassing the manufacturers' protection schemes. The ringleader of the group began calling him ‘the master of parameters’ — The Parmaster — Par, for short. As he moved into serious hacking and developed his expertise in X.25 networks, he kept the name because it fitted nicely in his new environ- ment. ‘Par?’ was a common command on an X.25 pad, the modem gateway to an X.25 network.

‘I’ve got lots more where that come from,’ Par told the stranger on Altos. ‘I’ve got like 4000 cards from a Citibank system.’

Not long after that, Steve Mathews was monitoring Altos again, when Par showed up handing out cards to people once more.

‘I’ve got an inside contact,’ Par confided. ‘He’s gonna make up a whole mess of new, plastic cards with all these valid numbers from the Citibank machine. Only the really big accounts, though. Nothing with a balance under $25 000.’

Was Par just making idle conversation, talking big on Altos? Or would he really have gone through with committing such a major fraud? Citibank, Telenet and the US Secret Service would never know, because their security guys began closing the net around Par before he had a chance to take his idea any further.

Mathews contacted Larry Wallace, fraud investigator with Citibank in San Mateo, California. Wallace checked out the cards. They were valid all right. They belonged to the Saudi- American Bank in Saudi Arabia and were held on a Citibank database in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Wallace determined that, with its affiliation to the Middle Eastern bank, Citibank had a custodial responsibility for the accounts. That meant he could open a major investigation.

On 7 November, Wallace brought in the US Secret Service. Four days later, Wallace and Special Agent Thomas Holman got their first major lead when they interviewed Gerry Lyons of Pacific Bell’s security office in San Francisco.