To John Bowler, the young, up-and-coming Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to my case, this must have seemed like a golden opportunity. If he could get convictions on all counts and convince the judge to slap me with a massive punitive sentence, the media attention alone would be enough to launch his career. But the reality was that Federal sentencing guidelines would ordinarily require the judge to base my sentence on the minimal losses to the cell phone companies when I made those free phone calls.