Hacker’s Alleged Accomplice Surrenders

A Bay Area executive indicted for helping notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick in a computer crime spree surrendered in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Friday and was released on $100,000 bond.

Lewis DePayne, a former Burbank and Pasadena resident, was described by his attorney as an “innocent, tax-paying” man who was accused only because of his longtime friendship with Mitnick.

DePayne, a computer systems manager for a large Newark, Calif., auto parts importing firm, is accused of helping Mitnick steal millions of dollars in software through a complex computer hacking scheme from June 1992 to February 1995.

According to the indictment, DePayne provided Mitnick with cellular telephones, helped him “clone” cellular phones by programming them with stolen serial numbers, maintained an Internet account that Mitnick used to transfer some of the stolen software and posed as an employee of a company Mitnick targeted for fraud during a telephone call.