on of
Doom was led out of Illinois, by the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse
Task Force.

#

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force, led by federal prosecutor
William J. Cook, had started in 1987 and had swiftly become one of the
most aggressive local "dedicated computer-crime units." Chicago was a
natural home for such a group. The world's first computer
bulletin-board system had been invented in Illinois. The state of
Illinois had some of the nation's first and sternest computer crime
laws. Illinois State Police were markedly alert to the possibilities
of white-collar crime and electronic fraud.

And William J. Cook in particular was a rising star in electronic
crime-busting. He and his fellow federal prosecutors at the U.S.
Attorney's office in Chicago had a tight relation with the Secret
Service, especially go-getting Chicago-based agent Timothy Foley.
While Cook and his Department of Justice colleagues plotted strategy,
Foley was their man on the street.

Throughout the 1980s, the federal government had given prosecutors an
armory of new, untried legal tools against computer crime. Cook and
his colleagues were pioneers in the use of these new statutes in the
real-life cut-and-thrust of the federal courtroom.

On October 2, 1986, the US Senate had passed the "Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act" unanimously, but there were pitifully few convictions under
this statute. Cook's group took their name from this statute, since
they were determined to transform this powerful but rather theoretical
Act of Congress into a real-life engine of legal destruction against
computer fraudsters and scofflaws.

It was not a question of merely discovering crimes, investigating them,
and then trying and punishing their perpetrators. The Chicago unit,
like most everyone else in the business, already KNEW who the bad guys
were: the Legion of Doom and the writers and editors of Phrack. The
task at hand was to find some legal means of putting these characters
away.

This approach might seem a bit dubious, to someone not acquainted with
the gritty realities of prosecutorial work. But prosecutors don't put
people in jail for crimes they have committed; they put people in jail
for crimes they have committed THAT CAN BE PROVED IN COURT. Chicago
federal police put Al Capone in prison for income-tax fraud. Chicago
is a big town, with a rough-and-ready bare-knuckle tradition on both
sides of the law.

Fry Guy had broken the case w