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KINGPIN

When the press attention faded, the SPA was willing to quietly settle the case for $3,500 and some free computer consulting. The whole affair even had a silver lining. It introduced Max to the FBI.

Chris Beeson, a young agent with the bureau's San Francisco computer crime squad, gave Max his pitch. The FBI could use Max's assistance navigating the computer underground. Recreational hackers were no longer a target for the bureau, he said. There was a new, more dangerous breed of computer criminal emerging: "real" criminals. They were cyberthieves, pedophiles, even terrorists. The FBI was no longer chasing people like Max and his ilk. "We're not the enemy," said Beeson.

Max wanted to help, and in March 1997 he was formally inducted into the FBI's Criminal Informant program. His first written report for the bureau was an introductory course on the virus-writing, warez, and computer-hacking scenes. His follow-up report ten days later ran down compromised file-transfer sites—like the one he'd exploited in Seattle— and a music piracy gang called Rabid Neurosis that had debuted the previous October with a bootlegged release of Metallica's Ride the Lightning.

When Max got his hands on a pirated version of AutoCAD that was being circulated by a crew called SWAT, the FBI rewarded him with a $200 payment. Beeson had Max sign the receipt with the bureau's code name for its new asset: Equalizer.

Max liked the FBI agent, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Neither of them knew that Chris Beeson would one day put his Equalizer back behind bars and begin Max's transformation into one of the "real" criminals Beeson had hoped to catch.