Frank Abagnale

Abagnale in 2007.
Born Frank William Abagnale, Jr.
April 27, 1948
Bronxville, New York, U.S.
Charge(s) Fraud, forgery, swindling
Penalty 12 months in French prison (about 6
months served)
6 months in Swedish prison
12 years in US prison (4 years served)
Occupation CEO of Abagnale & Associates
(security consultants)
Spouse Kelly
[1]
Children Scott, Chris, Sean
[1]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frank William Abagnale, Jr. ( /bnel/, Italian
pronunciation: [abaale]; born April 27, 1948)
[2]
is an
American security consultant known for his history as a
former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and
escape artist. He became notorious in the 1960s for passing
$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 became one of the most famous impostors
ever,
[3]
claiming to have assumed no fewer than eight
separate identities as an airline pilot, a doctor, a U.S. Bureau
of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. He escaped from police
custody twice (once from a taxiing airliner and once from a
U.S. federal penitentiary), before he was 21 years old.
[4]
He served fewer than five years in prison before starting to
work for the federal government. He is a consultant and
lecturer at the academy and field offices for the FBI. He also
runs Abagnale & Associates, a financial fraud consultancy
company.
[5]
Abagnale's life story provided the inspiration for the feature
film Catch Me If You Can, as well as the Broadway musical
with the same name, which opened in April 2011, and
ghostwritten autobiography of the same name.
1 Childhood
2 First con
3 Bank fraud
4 Impersonations
4.1 Airline pilot
4.2 Teaching assistant
4.3 Doctor
4.4 Attorney
5 Capture and imprisonment
6 Alleged escapes
7 Legitimate jobs
8 Veracity of claims
9 Media appearances
10 Books
11 See also
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12 References
13 External links
Abagnale was one of four children and spent the first sixteen years of his life in Bronxville, New York.
[6]
His
French mother, Paulette, and father, Frank Abagnale Sr., divorced when he was 16. At the divorce hearing,
Abagnale ran away never to see his father again.
[7]
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 theatre, and was a major role model for
Abagnale Jr.
[8]
His first victim was his father who gave Frank a gas credit card and a truck to assist him in commuting to his
part-time job. Frank Jr. devised a scheme to help pay for his dates with women. He used the credit card to "buy"
tires, batteries, and other car-related items at gas stations. He made a deal with the attendants in which they
gave him cash in return for them keeping the products. Ultimately, his father was liable for a bill of several
thousand dollars.
[9]
Abagnale's first confidence trick was writing personal checks on his own overdrawn account. This, however,
would work for only 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
entered his account rather than the accounts of the legitimate customers.
In a speech, 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?"
[10]
Airline pilot
Abagnale decided to imitate a pilot because he wanted to fly throughout the world for free. He got a uniform by
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calling PanAm, telling them that he was a pilot working for them who had lost his uniform, and going to get a
new one with a fake employee ID. He then forged an FAA pilot's license.
[11]
Pan American World Airways
estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, 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 company. Abagnale stated that he was often
invited by actual pilots to take the controls of the plane in-flight. On one occasion, he was offered the courtesy
of flying at 30,000 feet. He took the controls, and enabled the autopilot, "very much aware that I had been
handed custody of 140 lives, my own included ... because I couldn't fly a drone".
[12]
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.
[13]
Doctor
For eleven months he impersonated a chief resident pediatrician in a Georgia hospital under the alias Frank
Conners. He chose this course after he was nearly arrested disembarking a flight in New Orleans. Afraid of
possible capture, he retired temporarily to Georgia. When filling out a rental application he impulsively listed his
occupation as "doctor", fearing that the owner might check with Pan Am if he wrote "pilot". After befriending a
real doctor who lived in the same apartment complex, he agreed to act as resident supervisor of interns as a
favor until the local hospital could find someone else to take the job. The position was not difficult for Abagnale
because supervisors did no real medical work. However, he was nearly exposed when an infant almost died
from oxygen deprivation; he had no idea what a nurse meant when she said there was a "blue baby". He was
able to fake his way through most of his duties by letting the interns handle the cases coming in during his
late-night shift, setting broken bones and other mundane tasks. When the hospital found a replacement he
returned to piloting, leaving only after he realized he could put lives at risk by his inability to respond to
situations like the blue baby.
[8]
Attorney
Abagnale forged a Harvard University law transcript, passed the bar exam of Louisiana and got a job at the
Louisiana Attorney General's office 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 eight 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."
[14]
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 suspicious graduate was making inquiries into his background.
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Abagnale was eventually caught in France in 1969 when an Air France attendant 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 Francea one-year sentence that was reduced by the presiding judge at his trial to six
months. At Perpignan he was held nude in a tiny, filthy, lightless cell that he was never allowed to leave. The
cell lacked toilet facilities, a mattress, or a blanket, and food and water were severely restricted.
[15]
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 Malm
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, the Swedish authorities were legally
compelled to deport him to the United States, where he was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison for
multiple counts of forgery.
[16]
While being deported 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 to purchase a
ticket to So 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 later 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 fiance 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 Shea),
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 NYPD detectives when he inadvertently walked past
their unmarked police car.
[8]
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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.
[16]
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 owe him only $500 with an agreement that they
would provide his name to other banks.
[17]
The banks were impressed by the results, and he began a legitimate
life as a security consultant.
[18][citation needed]
He later founded Abagnale & Associates,
[18]
which advises businesses 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,
[19]
more than 14,000
institutions have adopted Abagnale's fraud prevention programs.
He lives in Charleston, South Carolina
[20]
with his wife, whom he married one year after becoming legitimate.
They have three sons, including one who currently works for the FBI.
Abagnale and Joe Shea, the FBI agent on whom the character of Carl Hanratty was based for the film Catch Me
If You Can, remained close friends until Shea's death.
The authenticity of Abagnale's criminal exploits was questioned 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."
[21]
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."
[22]
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 Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002),
featuring actor Leonardo DiCaprio in his place. This movie is based on the semi-autobiographical book of the
Frank Abagnale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Frank Abagnale and Leonardo
DiCaprio.
same name, written by Abagnale with the help of Stan Redding. The real
Abagnale makes a cameo appearance in this film as one of the French
police officers taking his character into custody.
In the early 1990s, Abagnale was featured as a recurring guest on the UK
Channel 4 television series The 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.
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.
In 2002, Abagnale wrote The Art of the Steal, listing common confidence tricks and ways to prevent consumers
from being defrauded. He also talked about identity theft and the advent of Internet scamming.
[23]
Catch Me If You Can, 2000. ISBN 978-0-7679-0538-1
The Art of the Steal, Broadway Books, 2001. ISBN 978-0-7679-0683-8
Real U Guide To Identity Theft, 2004. ISBN 978-1-932999-01-3
Stealing Your Life, Random House/Broadway Books, April 2007. ISBN 978-0-7679-2586-0
Questioned document examination
Michael Sabo
Ferdinand Waldo Demara
^
a

b
Stephanie Hunt (September 2010). "Charleston Profile: Bona Fide" (http://www.abagnale.com
/news092010.asp) . Charleston Mag. http://www.abagnale.com/news092010.asp. Retrieved 2011-04-01.
1.
^ "Abagnale, Frank". Current Biography Yearbook 2011. Ipswich, MA: H.W. Wilson. 2011. pp. 1-4.
ISBN 9780824211219.
2.
^ Lawrence M. Salinger, Encyclopedia of white-collar and corporate crime (http://books.google.com
/books?id=P41ij0GoFL4C&q=Abagnale#v=snippet&q=Abagnale&f=false) : A I, Volume 1, page 418, ISBN
0-7619-3004-3, 2005.
3.
^ Luke Mullins (May 19, 2008). "How Frank Abagnale Would Swindle You" (http://money.usnews.com/money
/blogs/the-collar/2008/05/19/how-frank-abagnale-would-swindle-you) . U.S. News. http://money.usnews.com/money
/blogs/the-collar/2008/05/19/how-frank-abagnale-would-swindle-you. Retrieved 2011-02-14.
4.
^ "Abagnale & Associates: Frank W. Abagnale" (http://www.abagnale.com/index2.asp) . abagnale.com.
http://www.abagnale.com/index2.asp. Retrieved 2011-02-14.
5.
^ "Frank Abagnale from 'Catch Me If You Can' - part 1" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFee0f1L5TI) ,
Youtube, accessed March 7, 2011
6.
^ http://www.wimp.com/frankabagnale/ 7.
^
a

b

c
Frank W. Abagnale, Stan Redding (2008). Catch Me If You Can (http://books.google.com/books?id=5rqO-
Hes4vYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Frank+W.+Abagnale+Catch+Me+If+You+Can&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false)
. New York: Random House, Inc. pp. 277. ISBN 0-7679-0538-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=5rqO-
Hes4vYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Frank+W.+Abagnale+Catch+Me+If+You+Can&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false.
8.
Frank Abagnale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6 of 8 17-Sep-12 12:11 PM
Retrieved 2011-02-14.
^ Bell, Rachael. "Skywayman: The Story of Frank W. Abagnale Jr" (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime
/criminal_mind/scams/frank_abagnale/index.html) . http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/scams
/frank_abagnale/index.html.
9.
^ "Catch Me If You Can: Frank Abagnale 10 Years Later" (http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP13928)
. SXSW. http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP13928. Retrieved 2012-03-26.
10.
^ "Frank Abagnale Biography". 1996. 11.
^ Frank W. Abagnale; Stan Redding (2000). "1 The Fledgling". Catch me if you can. Broadway. pp. 34.
ISBN 978-0-7679-0538-1.
12.
^ Ryan McIlvain (March 11, 2005). "The art of the steal" (http://nn.byu.edu/story.cfm/54787) . BYU NewsNet.
http://nn.byu.edu/story.cfm/54787. Retrieved 2011-02-14.
13.
^ "Practicing and Evading the Law" (http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/frank_abagnale/6.html) .
Courtroom Television Network LLC. http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/frank_abagnale/6.html.
Retrieved 2006-08-13.
14.
^ Lawson, Mark S. (June 11, 2004). "Abu Ghraib and other prisons around the world"
(http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2281) . ON LINE Opinion. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au
/view.asp?article=2281. Retrieved June 18, 2011.
15.
^
a

b
Conway, Allan (2004). Analyze This: What Handwriting Reveals (http://www.amazon.com/Analyze-
This-What-Handwriting-Reveals/dp/1856487075) . PRC Publishing; First Edition. p. 64. ISBN 978-1-85648-707-8.
http://www.amazon.com/Analyze-This-What-Handwriting-Reveals/dp/1856487075.
16.
^ Abagnale, Frank W. (2001). The Art of the Steal. Broadway Books. p. . 17.
^
a

b
"Abagnale & Associates" (http://www.abagnale.com/) . Abagnale & Associates. http://www.abagnale.com/.
Retrieved 2007-05-20.
18.
^ http://www.abagnale.com/aboutfrank.htm 19.
^ http://www.abagnale.com/news092010.asp 20.
^ "PORTRAIT OF THE CON ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN" (http://web.archive.org/web/20071012201111/http:
//www.newsthinking.com/story.cfm?SID=166) . newsthinking.com. December 6, 2002. Archived from the original
(http://www.newsthinking.com/story.cfm?SID=166) on 2007-10-12. http://web.archive.org/web/20071012201111
/http://www.newsthinking.com/story.cfm?SID=166. Retrieved 2011-02-14.
21.
^ "Abagnale & Associates, Comments" (http://www.abagnale.com/comments.htm) . http://www.abagnale.com
/comments.htm. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
22.
^ Ebert, Roger. (2003) Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2004, Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC. p. 105. ISBN
978-0-7407-3834-0.
23.
The Story of Frank W. Abagnale Jr. from Crime Library.com (http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind
/scams/frank_abagnale/index.html?sect=27)
Official Abagnale & Associates site (http://www.abagnale.com/)
Transcript of radio interview from ABC in 2000 (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s111098.htm)
Frank Abagnale (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7646/) at the Internet Movie Database
Interview of Frank Abagnale with BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4754733.stm)
Official Website for Catch Me If You Can the musical (http://www.catchmethemusical.com/)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_Abagnale&oldid=511388932"
Categories: 1948 births Living people American people of French descent Brigham Young University staff
Confidence tricksters American prisoners and detainees American white-collar criminals Forgers
Impostors People from Bronxville, New York Prisoners and detainees of Sweden
Prisoners and detainees of France American people imprisoned abroad
Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government
Escapees from United States federal government detention People from Tulsa, Oklahoma
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American people convicted of fraud American businesspeople Businesspeople from New York City
Businesspeople from Oklahoma
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