Man Buys His Dream Porsche With Inheritance Money From Legendary Hacker He Helped Jail

A car geek has caught social media's attention after sharing pictures of a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS and the fascinating story behind the purchase. In a now-viral Reddit post titled, 'Baby pictures,' the user named Shawn Nunley revealed that his close friend, who passed away three years ago, left him a legacy inheritance large enough to purchase his dream car. That friend was Kevin Mitnick, one of the world's most famous hackers. Nunley originally helped federal authorities put Mitnick in prison, but that encounter forged a lifelong friendship and one of the most meaningful relationships of his life.

In a tribute blog post, Nunley explained that he was working for a now-defunct brand called Novell in the '90s when Mitnick set his eyes on the tech company. Novell produced enterprise software, which made it the ideal target for Mitnick, known for his 1979 score when he performed his first major cyber intrusion by breaking into the computer systems of the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

“Back in the 90s, Kevin was trying very hard to hack into Novell's network,” Nunley wrote. “I was a network administrator. Of course, we had no idea it was Kevin, but things were happening that made it fairly obvious we had a persistent threat. Phones ringing sequentially throughout the building (war dialing) and all sorts of other signs, we knew something was up," wrote Nunley.

Late one night, Nunley received a call from an employee named Gabe Nault, who wanted a critical access. Suspicious that any employee would make the abnormal request that goes against company policy, Nunley told Nault, who was, in fact, MItnick, that he can't help him now but will look into it in the morning.

“I said, ‘Hey man, I'd love to help you out, but I can't do what you want from here at home anyway, so I'll have to do it in the morning as soon as I get to the office. But in case I forget, please leave me a voicemail.' He agreed, and that was that.”

“When I got to work, the voicemail was there, and I immediately recorded it onto a cassette recorder for safekeeping,” he wrote. “That recording became the primary evidence in Kevin's case.”

Baby pictures
by u/nunley in porsche911

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The Friendship

When Mitnick was caught, Nunley realised that the voicemail he recorded was the only meaningful evidence that the Justice Department had against him. Nunley initially worked closely with the agencies but soon became disillusioned as the case dragged on. He contacted Mitnick's lawyers, and soon after, the latter was released from prison with a plea deal.

"A short time later, I got a sincere apology from Kevin. We decided to meet face-to-face. Of all places, it ended up being at RSA in San Francisco, and a reporter named Eleanor Abreu was there. She wrote an article about our meeting, and it went kind of viral," said Nunley.

"Anyway, we hit it off when we met. Somehow, we became great friends in the process, and I have had a wonderful time watching him develop into a real man. I am truly sad he is gone as he was a big part of my life for the last quarter century."

Over the years, the adversaries turned into the best of friends, and when Mitnick passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2023, he left Nunley a gift, enough to buy his dream car, a 911 Carrera 4 GTS.