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Even though no charges were filed against Steve, his business suffered during the enforced holiday he enjoyed while the Secret Service sat on his computer systems. His turnover was down; half his staff was laid off. He estimates his losses for the period as over $300,000. With the help of the Foundation, he has since filed a civil suit against the Secret Service, two of its agents, Assistant US Attorney William Cook and a Bellcore security manager.

Loyd Blankenship - The Mentor - has, at the time of writing, not been charged with anything either, though he has never received his computer equipment back. It is not thought likely that he ever will, given his background in the LoD. As a known hacker he is not pressing the Secret Service too hard; instead, said a friend, he's ‘lying low’ for the time being.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation couldn't help everyone. But then, not every hacker busted was an innocent.

Phiber Optik was sentenced to a period of thirty-five hours of community service on 4 April 1990 for a relatively minor hacking offence. Worse, he suffered the ignominy of being thrown out of the Legion of Doom - though that had nothing to do with his arrest. His crime, in the LoD's eyes, was that he and Acid Phreak (a non-Legionnaire) had demonstrated their hacking skills for a magazine article published in Esquire in December 1990. Though both he and Acid Phreak had kept their identities secret - even using phoney handles - the other Legionnaires felt the young hacker was on ‘an ego trip’, a charge confirmed for them when he appeared on a number of television shows. Phiber Optik, the other Legionnaires decided, had too high a profile for the Legion.

Not being in LoD didn't stop him hacking. He joined the MoD instead - but then was busted on 6 December 1991 with four other MoD members: Julio, Corrupt, Renegade Hacker and The Wing. These arrests were devastating to the gang, principally because their equipment was confiscated. The MoD accused the Legion of turning them in as a last reprisal in the hacker wars. (The charge seems unlikely.)

The government also served ‘pre-indictment’ papers on the other two New York hackers, Acid Phreak and The Scorpion, though it

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