Arrest Uncovers Computer ‘Textbook’ on Crime Tips

The arrest of an Agoura Hills boy, who allegedly obtained instructions for making a fraudulent credit card purchase through the use of his home computer, has uncovered the existence of a virtual textbook of crime tips on a computerized bulletin board popular with teen-agers, authorities said Thursday.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators looking for those responsible for operating the electronic bulletin board said the boy’s arrest also led them to believe that there may be a teen-age burglary ring operating in the Agoura Hills area.

“It’s all spelled out there on the computer,” Detective Imon Mills said. “You can get numbers of different banks of information. If you want to make Molotov cocktails, bombs, hot-wire a car, prowl, take a trip to Hawaii, it’s all there, step-by-step.”

Detectives said the boy who was arrested--a 14-year-old Agoura High School student--used his terminal to call up instructions on how to use someone else’s credit card number to make purchases and have them delivered.

Bought Model Helicopter

The teen-ager, whose name was withheld because of his age, was taken into custody Wednesday for investigation of grand theft by fraud after he allegedly used a Westlake Village doctor’s credit card number to buy an $850 radio-controlled model helicopter.

Investigators said the youth has admitted getting directions for the crime from the bulletin board, which allows computer hobbyists to exchange information between home computers.

The unusual crime primer instructed the boy how to hunt for used credit card carbon forms in trash dumpsters and use the account numbers to charge purchases by telephone, Mills said. It also advised how to have the goods delivered by a private shipping service to vacant houses.

The boy retrieved his carbon forms from a rubbish container at a shopping center in Thousand Oaks and had a North Hollywood hobby shop ship the model to an empty house in his neighborhood, investigators said.

Called Away

“He left a note on the house’s door saying he had been called away and to leave the delivery on the doorstep. It worked like clockwork,” Mills said.

Authorities were tipped off about the scheme by another teen-ager.

Mills said the investigation of the computer-assisted theft turned up evidence of a more conventional teen-age burglary ring in which youths stole goods from garages and patios and sold or traded the items among themselves. However, there is no evidence that the youths used computers to learn criminal techniques, detectives said.

“We’re still uncovering additional crimes” which the arrested boy may have been involved in or have known about, including burglary, petty theft and grand theft, Mills said.

No other arrests have been made, but another 14-year-old is being investigated, Mills said.

“This is going in a lot of directions,” he said of the investigation. “It’s like an octopus. It’s just unbelievable.”

Used Nicknames

Mills said it may be difficult to trace the person responsible for the Agoura Hills crime instructions, because computer enthusiasts used only first names or nicknames when connected to the bulletin board.

Bob Mohammadi, a computer consultant who is based in Agoura Hills, said it is probable that the bulletin board was open to numerous computer users. He said he has never come across one that featured crime tips.

“Most bulletin boards have information on computers or things like books or movies,” he said. “It should be illegal to put something like that in them.”