According to the paper, several years before his arrest in the nation's largest credit card heist, Gonzalez started a bold plan to hack into the government network of India from computers in his high school library.
At the time, Gonzalez was a 17-year-old student at the South Miami Senior High and had, the paper said, hacked through the security systems of the school's IT network and left "offensive notes on government message boards."
The Herald added that the successful breach of the Indian network across the world stunned school administrators, but "showed Gonzalez was already demonstrating the skills that would define him as one of the most prolific hackers in United States history."
"Now charged with stealing more than 130 million credit card numbers in a sweeping fraud case, the Miami native escaped punishment a decade ago when he tapped into Indian servers using two computers in his high school library," said the paper.
The Miami paper quoted the South Miami Senior High's principal as saying the FBI paid the school a visit and investigated two of the PCs in the school library.
Gonzalez was not charged with any crime by the FBI, his former principal said, but the agents recommended he stay away from computers for six months.
Now aged 28, Gonzalez appears to have started his hacking exploits 20 years ago when his parents - Maria and Alberto - bought him his first PC and, by the time he reached nine years old he was already working out how to remove viruses.
"He didn't go out and play football with his friends," a family friend told the paper.
"He was always in front of his computer. His best friend was his computer."