Mitnick Colleague Pleads Guilty

Lewis DePayne, longtime friend and alleged accomplice of computer hacker Kevin Mitnick, pleaded guilty to scheming to defraud a cellular telephone company. The agreement takes care of one of the loose ends of the saga of Mitnick, who last month pleaded guilty to computer crimes stemming from a hacking spree that ended with his capture in 1995. DePayne, 39, admitted to impersonating an employee of Nokia Corp. in an attempt to assist Mitnick in tricking the company out of valuable software, Assistant U.S. Atty. Chris Painter said. In turn, prosecutors agreed to drop 13 other criminal counts against DePayne and to recommend that he be sentenced to six months of home detention or community confinement, five years of probation, 225 hours of community service and a fine of $2,000 to $5,000. DePayne will probably be allowed to continue working in his computer-related job in the San Francisco Bay Area.