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Frank William Abagnale, Jr. (born April 27, 1948) is an American
security consultant best known for his history as a former confidence
trickster, cheque forger, skilled impostor, and escape artist. He
became notorious in the 1960s for successfully passing US$2.5 million
worth of meticulously forged checks across 26 countries over the
course of five years, beginning when he was 16 years old. In the
process, he claimed to have assumed no fewer than eight separate
identities, successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, a
Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. He escaped from police custody
twice (once from a taxiing airliner and once from a US federal
penitentiary), all before he was 21 years old.

Abagnale's life story provided the inspiration for the feature film
Catch Me If You Can, very loosely based on his ghostwritten
autobiography of the same name. He is currently a consultant and
lecturer at the academy and field offices for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. He also runs Abagnale & Associates, a financial fraud
consultancy company.

Childhood
Abagnale was born the third of four children and spent the first
sixteen years of his life in Bronxville, New York. His French mother,
Paulette, and father, Frank Abagnale Sr., divorced when he was 16, and
afterwards he would be the only child of whom his father would gain
custody. At the divorce hearing, Abagnale ran away never to see his
father again.[3] According to Abagnale, his father did not necessarily
want him, but to reunite his family, he would attempt to win his
mother back until his father's death in 1974. His father was also an
affluent local who was very keen on politics, and was a major role
model for Abagnale Jr.[4]

[edit] First con
His first victim was his father. As Frank Jr. grew interested in
women, he found that he could not stop spending money on them. To fund
his exploits with the opposite sex, since he was always short on cash,
he asked his father for a credit card on which to charge gas for the
1952 Ford truck his father gave him. He began to make deals with gas
station employees all around the New York area to falsely charge items
to his card, then give him a portion of the money; in return the
employee got to keep the item and "resell" it for the full price. Over
the course of two months, Frank Jr "bought" 14 sets of tires, 22
batteries, and large quantities of gasoline.[5]

The bill totaled US$3,400, which his father discovered only after a
debt collector contacted him in person, as Frank Jr. was throwing away
the bills that came in the mail. According to Catch Me If You Can,
Frank Sr. was not angered with his son over the charges rung up, but
merely puzzled as to his motive. Both he and the bill collector
sympathized when Frank Jr. explained that "It's the girls, Dad, they
do funny things to me. I can't explain it". However, Frank Jr. decided
to rethink his ways and find new quick cash ideas, mainly because he
saw that the gas card scam had hurt Frank Sr, a man he viewed as a
hardworking businessman.[5]

[edit] Bank fraud
Abagnale's first confidence trick was writing personal checks on his
own overdrawn account. This, however, would only work for a limited
time before the bank demanded payment, so he moved on to opening other
accounts in different banks, eventually creating new identities to
sustain this charade. Over time, he experimented and developed
different ways of defrauding banks, such as printing out his own
almost-perfect copies of checks, depositing them and persuading banks
to advance him cash on the basis of money in his accounts.

One of Abagnale's famous tricks was to print his account number on
blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank slips in
the bank. This meant that the deposits written on those slips by bank
customers ended up going into his account rather than that of the
legitimate customers.

At a speech given to the students of Florida State University, Frank
described one instance where he noticed the location where airlines
and car rental businesses such as United Airlines and Hertz would drop
off their daily collections of money in a zip-up bag and deposit it
into a drop box on the airport premises. Using a security guard
disguise he bought at a local costume shop, he put a sign over the box
saying "out of service, place deposits with security guard on duty"
and collected money that way. Later he disclosed how he could not
believe this idea had actually worked, stating with some astonishment:
"how can a drop box be out of service?" [6]

[edit] Impersonations
[edit] Airline pilot
Pan American World Airways estimated that between the ages of 16 and
18, Frank Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles on over 250 flights and
flew to 26 countries, at Pan Am's expense, by deadheading. He was also
able to stay at hotels for free during this time. Everything from food
to lodging was billed to the airline. Abagnale stated that although he
was often invited by actual pilots to take the controls in-flight, he
never actually accepted their offers, instead using the "8 hours
between the bottle and the throttle" rule as a convenient alibi.
[citation needed]

[edit] Teaching assistant
He forged a Columbia University degree and taught sociology at Brigham
Young University for a semester, working as a teaching assistant by
the name of "Frank Adams".[7]

[edit] Doctor
For nearly a year, he impersonated a chief resident pediatrician in a
Georgia hospital under the alias of Frank Conners. He chose to do this
after nearly being caught by police after leaving a flight in New
Orleans. Aware of possible capture, he retired to Georgia for the time
being. When filling out an application for an apartment he listed his
previous occupation as "doctor" fearing that the owner might check
with Pan Am if he had listed "pilot". After becoming friends with a
real doctor who lived beneath him, he became a resident supervisor of
interns as a favor for him until they found someone who could take the
job. He did not find the job difficult because supervisors did not
have to do any actual medical work. However, as a medical layman,
Abagnale was nearly discovered after almost letting a baby die through
oxygen deprivation (he had no idea what the nurse meant when she said
there was a "blue baby"). Abagnale was able to fake his way through
most of his duties by letting the interns handle most of the cases
that came in during his late night shift, for example setting broken
bones and other such tasks. Finally, the hospital found another
replacement and he returned to the air. In an interview, he said that
the supervisor had a death in the family and had to fly out West,
during which Abagnale took the position. However, since they had
trouble finding a permanent applicant, he stayed for thirty six months.
[citation needed]

[edit] Attorney
Abagnale forged a Harvard University law transcript, passed the bar
exam of Louisiana and got a job at the office of the state attorney
general of Louisiana at the age of nineteen. This happened while he
was posing as Pan Am First Officer "Robert Black". He told a
stewardess he had briefly dated that he was also a Harvard law student
and she introduced him to a lawyer friend. Abagnale was told the bar
needed more lawyers and was offered a chance to apply. After making a
fake transcript from Harvard, he prepared himself for the compulsory
exam. Despite failing twice, he claims to have passed the bar exam
legitimately on the third try after 8 weeks of study, because
"Louisiana at the time allowed you to (take) the Bar over and over as
many times as you needed. It was really a matter of eliminating what
you got wrong."[8]

In his biography, he described the premise of his legal job as a
"gopher boy" who simply fetched coffee and books for his boss.
However, there was a real Harvard graduate who also worked for that
attorney general, and he hounded Abagnale with questions about his
tenure at Harvard. Naturally, Abagnale could not answer questions
about a university he had never attended, and he later resigned after
eight months to protect himself, after learning the suspecting
graduate was making inquiries into his background.

[edit] Capture and imprisonment
Eventually he was caught in France in 1969 when an Air France
attendant whom he had dated in the past recognized him and notified
the police. When the French police apprehended him, 12 of the
countries in which he had committed fraud sought his extradition.
After a two-day trial, he first served prison time in Perpignan's
House of Arrest in France—a one-year sentence that was reduced by the
presiding judge at his trial to six months. His stay in Perpignan left
him fearful of spending more time in another version of the prison.
[citation needed]

He was then extradited to Sweden where he was treated fairly well
under Swedish law. During trial for forgery, his defense attorney
almost had his case dismissed by arguing that he had "created" the
fake checks and not forged them, but his charges were instead reduced
to swindling and fraud. He served six months in a Malmö prison, only
to learn at the end of it he would be tried next in Italy. Later, a
Swedish judge asked a U.S. State Department official to revoke his
passport. Without a valid passport Swedish authorities were legally
compelled to deport him to the U.S., where he was sentenced to 12
years in a federal prison for multiple counts of forgery.[9]

[edit] Alleged escapes
While being extradited to the U.S., Abagnale escaped from a British
VC-10 airliner as it was turning onto a taxi strip at New York's JFK
International Airport. Under cover of night, he scaled a nearby fence
and hailed a cab to Grand Central Terminal. After stopping in the
Bronx to change clothes and pick up a set of keys to a Montreal bank
safe deposit box containing US$20,000, Abagnale caught a train to
Montreal's Dorval airport (now Montreal-Pierre Elliot Trudeau
International Airport) to purchase a ticket to São Paulo, Brazil, a
country with which the U.S. had no extradition treaty. On his way to
Montreal he had a close call at a Mac's Milk in Dundas, Ontario. He
was caught by a constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while
standing in line at the ticket counter and subsequently handed over to
the U.S. Border Patrol.[citation needed]

Being sentenced to 12 years in the Federal Correction Institution at
Petersburg, Virginia, in April 1971, Abagnale also reportedly escaped
the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta, Georgia while awaiting trial,
which he considers in his book to be one of the most infamous escapes
in history. During the time, U.S. prisons were being condemned by
civil rights groups and investigated by congressional committees. In a
stroke of luck that included the accompanying U.S. marshal forgetting
his detention commitment papers, Abagnale was mistaken for an
undercover prison inspector and was even given privileges and food far
better than the other inmates. The FDC in Atlanta had already lost two
employees as a result of reports written by undercover federal agents,
and Abagnale took advantage of their vulnerability. He contacted a
friend (called in his book "Jean Sebring") who posed as his fiancée
and slipped him the business card of "Inspector C.W. Dunlap" of the
Bureau of Prisons which she had obtained by posing as a freelance
writer doing an article on "fire safety measures in federal detention
centers". She also handed over a business card from "Sean
O'Riley" (later revealed to be Joe Shaye), the FBI agent in charge of
Abagnale's case, which she doctored at a stationery print shop.
Abagnale told the corrections officers that he was indeed a prison
inspector and handed over Dunlap's business card as proof. He told
them that he needed to contact FBI Agent Sean O'Riley, on a matter of
urgent business.[citation needed]

O'Riley's phone number (actually the number altered by Sebring) was
dialed and picked up by Jean Sebring, at a payphone in an Atlanta
shopping-mall, posing as an operator at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. Later, he was allowed to meet unsupervised with O'Riley
in a predetermined car outside the detention center. Sebring,
incognito, picked Abagnale up and drove him to an Atlanta bus station
where he took a Greyhound bus to New York, and soon thereafter, a
train to Washington, D.C.. Abagnale bluffed his way through an
attempted capture by posing as an FBI agent after being recognized by
a motel registration clerk. Still bent on making his way to Brazil,
Abagnale was picked up a few weeks later by two New York City Police
Department detectives when he inadvertently walked past their unmarked
police car.[4]

[edit] Legitimate jobs
In 1974, after he had served less than five years, the United States
federal government released him on the condition that he would help
the federal authorities without pay against crimes committed by fraud
and scam artists, and sign in once a week.[9] Not wanting to return to
his family in New York, he left the choice of parole up to the court,
and it was decided that he would be paroled in Texas.

After his release, Abagnale tried several jobs, including cook, grocer
and movie projectionist, but he was fired from most of these upon
having his criminal career discovered via background checks and not
informing his employers that he was a former convict. Finding them
unsatisfying, he approached a bank with an offer. He explained to the
bank what he had done, and offered to speak to the bank's staff and
show various tricks that "paperhangers" use to defraud banks. His
offer included the condition that if they did not find his speech
helpful, they would owe him nothing; otherwise, they would only owe
him $50, with an agreement that they would provide his name to other
banks. The banks were impressed by the results, and he began a
legitimate life as a security consultant.[citation needed]

He later founded Abagnale & Associates,[10] which advises the business
world on fraud. Abagnale is now a millionaire through his legal fraud
detection and avoidance consulting business based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Abagnale also continues to advise the FBI, with whom he has associated
for over 35 years, by teaching at the FBI Academy and lecturing for
FBI field offices throughout the country. According to his website,
[11] more than 14,000 institutions have adopted Abagnale's fraud
prevention programs.

He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his wife, whom he married one year
after becoming legitimate. They have three sons, and one of those sons
currently works for the FBI.

Joe Shaye, the FBI agent on whom the character of Carl Handratty was
based for the film Catch Me If You Can, remained a close friend.

[edit] Veracity of claims
The authenticity of Abagnale's criminal exploits have been questioned
since even before the publishing of Catch Me If You Can. In 1978,
after Abagnale had been a featured speaker at an anti-crime seminar, a
San Francisco Chronicle reporter looked into his assertions. Phone
calls to banks, schools, hospitals and other institutions Abagnale
mentioned turned up no evidence of his cons under the aliases he used.
Abagnale's response was that "Due to the embarrassment involved, I
doubt if anyone would confirm the information."[12]

In 2002, Abagnale himself addressed the issue of his story's
truthfulness rather vaguely with a statement posted on his company's
website. The statement said in part "I was interviewed by the co-
writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling
the story, but he also over dramatized and exaggerated some of the
story. That was his style and what the editor wanted. He always
reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my
biography."[13]

[edit] Media appearances
In 1977, Abagnale appeared on the TV quiz show To Tell the Truth,
along with two contestants also presenting themselves as him. A
reenactment of this episode appeared in Catch Me if You Can, featuring
actor Leonardo DiCaprio in his place.

In the early 1990s, Abagnale was featured as a recurring guest on the
UK Channel 4 television series Secret Cabaret. The show was based
around magic and illusions with a sinister, almost gothic presentation
style. Abagnale was featured as an expert exposing various confidence
tricks.

Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed Abagnale in the 2002 Steven Spielberg film
Catch Me if You Can. The film is based on his exploits as described in
his book of the same name (ISBN 978-0-7679-0538-1), but alters many
aspects of his life story for dramatic purposes. The real Abagnale
makes a cameo appearance in this film as one of the French police
officers taking his character into custody.

In 2007, Abagnale appeared in a short role as a speaker in the BBC TV
series The Real Hustle. He spoke of different scams run by fraudsters.