Justin Tanner Petersen

Justin Tanner Petersen (July 28, 1960 – March 13, 2010), also known as Eric Heinz, was an American hacker, concert promoter, sound engineer, private investigator, and FBI informant. Operating under the handle Agent Steal, he committed a series of computer intrusions and fraud schemes beginning in the late 1970s. While serving as an FBI informant tasked with helping to catch other hackers, he continued to commit serious crimes, including wire fraud and identity theft.

Life Justin Petersen was born on July 28, 1960, in Washington, D.C., and began hacking computers in 1978. In 1984, he moved to Los Angeles, where he became involved in the Sunset Strip nightlife scene.

In 1989, Petersen—using the handle Agent Steal and the alias Eric Heinz, which he had assumed after leaving the East Coast—cracked the computers of Pacific Bell Telephone Company in California and used his access to intercept the telephone lines of several local FM radio stations. With this access, he and associates were able to ensure that they were the only callers who could get through during on-air contests, and thus the only winners. Although the associates remain officially unknown, strong rumors persist that Kevin Poulsen (aka Dark Dante) and Ronald Austin were involved. Their winnings included $50,000 in cash, several trips to Hawaii, and two Porsches. Petersen subsequently moved to Texas, where he hacked into a national credit reporting agency, obtained fraudulent credit cards using the information he found, and used them freely. A grand jury in Texas returned an eight-count indictment, accusing Petersen of assuming false identities, accessing a computer without authorization, possessing stolen account IDs, and fraudulently obtaining and using credit cards. Petersen also faced a charge related to his alleged compilation of U.S. federal government wiretap records on persons under active surveillance; this charge was dropped under a plea bargain following a debriefing by law enforcement, according to Littman. ), who asked whether Petersen had committed any crimes while free on bail. Petersen requested a conference with his attorney, then fled the courthouse, becoming a fugitive a second time. with the Church of Scientology through a Beverly Hills private investigator named Shlomi Michaels and former FBI Special Agent in Charge Ted Gunderson. The firm Petersen worked for allegedly contracted him to eavesdrop on the Aznarans—high-ranking ex-Scientologists living in Texas who were cooperating with journalist Richard Behar in the writing of the highly critical 1991 Time magazine cover story on the church. Vicki and Richard Aznaran had left the Church of Scientology under circumstances they described as involving duress, and subsequently filed a complaint against Scientology alleging false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and other tortious conduct.

Death Petersen was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment on March 13, 2010. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner listed his cause of death as "multiple drug intoxication."