http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173831.html By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes PENWAUKEE, WISCONSIN, U.S.A., 22 Jan 2002, 1:08 PM CST A 22-year-old computer expert accused of hacking into Ebay and other companies has fired his lawyer and will represent himself in court, his father said today. Facing 26 counts of computer hacking, Jerome Heckenkamp, formerly a computer network engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has lost confidence in his attorney, noted computer crime defense lawyer Jennifer Granick, according to Thomas Heckenkamp. "After fifty thousand dollars and a year, she hasn't accomplished anything. She even told Jerome he would lose if his case goes to trial. Who wants a lawyer like that?" the elder Heckenkamp said today. Granick, currently clinical director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, declined to comment on Thomas Heckenkamp's claims, except to confirm that a court in San Jose on Wednesday will decide whether to allow Heckenkamp, who has no legal training, to defend himself. Thomas Heckenkamp contended that Granick advised Jerome to accept a plea bargain offered by prosecutors, despite the Heckenkamp's belief that Jerome is innocent. "He's going to fight this now like she hasn't, and he's going to win," said Thomas Heckenkamp. A trial in the case has been delayed until late April, he said. Jerome Heckenkamp, who is incarcerated at the Santa Clara County Jail, was arrested in New Mexico last January. Soon thereafter Heckenkamp was fired by Los Alamos National Labs, where he was working as a network security expert. According to its Web site, Los Alamos is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Heckenkamp, who has admitted to using the hacker nickname "SK8," denied charges that he is also "MagicFX," a computer criminal accused of causing nearly a million dollars worth of damages by hacking into Ebay, Exodus, ETrade, Qualcomm, Lycos, Juniper Networks and Cygnus Support Solutions in 1999. Heckenkamp contends that someone else remotely hijacked his dorm-room computer and surreptitiously committed the crimes while he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Heckenkamp was jailed Jan. 18 after asking a court to rescind the $50,000 bond posted on his behalf by a friend, his father said. Besides relieving the friend of a financial burden, the move is designed to be "a necessary first step in order to truly fight his case," according to FreeSK8.org, a Web site set up by an anonymous individual to publicize Heckenkamp's case. Soon after being processed by the jail last week, Heckenkamp was placed in solitary confinement for five hours because he refused to sign documents he did not understand, his father said. The FreeSK8 site is at http://www.freesk8.org - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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