I continued to sit in solitary while attorney Alan Rubin negotiated with the prosecutor about the terms of a plea bargain that would let me get out of prison without a trial. I was being charged with breaking into DEC and possessing MCI access codes, causing DEC a loss of $4 million—an absurd claim. Digital’s actual losses were related to the investigation of the incident; the $4 million figure was an arbitrary number chosen for the purpose of sentencing me to a lengthy prison term under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. My punishment should really have been based on the cost of the licensing fees I hadn’t paid for the source code I’d copied, which would have been much, much less.