Frank Abagnale
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Frank William Abagnale, Jr. (born April 27, 1948) was a check forger and impostor for five years in the 1960s. Currently he runs Abagnale and Associates, a financial fraud consultancy company. His life story provided the inspiration for the feature film Catch Me If You Can, nominally based on his ghost-written biography of the same name.
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[edit] Biography
Born and raised outside New York City in Westchester County, he was a middle child of a French mother Paula Abagnale and an American father Frank William Abagnale, Sr., the third of a family with four children. Frank had 2 brothers and 1 sister. His schooling was done at Iona Preparatory School, a Catholic school in New Rochelle that was run by the Irish Christian Brothers. In 1962, while at the age of fourteen, his parents divorced, an experience that was so traumatic for him that he ran away two years later at sixteen. It was the last time he saw his father, though he renewed contact with his mother after seven years. He did, however, call his father after escaping from an airline after serving prison time in Europe.[1]
One of the early signs of his future as a fraud came when after purchasing a car, he persuaded his father to lend him his Mobil card. This way, he could purchase car parts, such as tires, batteries, and engines, without actually accepting them, but receive money from the dealer, so that he could sell the parts to earn a profit. Not realizing that the card was in his father's name, he made well over $5,000 doing this to pay for dates, before the local Mobil branch sought his father out for questioning and expecting payment. Upon being confronted, Abagnale confessed to his father that "it's the girls that make me crazy," but escaped punishment from the incident. Later, he was placed in a special Catholic Charities school for juvenile offenders by his mother for four months.
Living alone in New York City after running away, he became known as the "Big Nale", later shortened to just "Big". He decided to exploit his mature appearance and alter his driver's license to make it appear that he was ten years older to get a job. However, Abagnale, posing as a high school dropout in his mid-twenties, quickly learned the more education, the more one is paid. Desperate to survive, he soon began working as a con artist to earn money.
[edit] Bank fraud
His first con was writing checks on his own overdrawn account, an activity which he discovered was possible when he was forced to write checks for more money than was in the 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, and cashing them and persuading banks to advance him cash on the basis of money in his accounts, money which of course never materialized as the checks depositing it were rejected.
One famous trick of Abagnale's 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. He collected over $40,000 by this method, before he was discovered. By the time the bank began looking into his case, Abagnale had collected all the money and had already changed his identity.
[edit] Impersonations
[edit] Pilot
For a period of two years Abagnale masqueraded as Pan Am pilot "Frank Williams" to get free rides around the world by deadheading on scheduled airline flights (a practice in which pilots receive free transportation from other airlines as a professional courtesy, when their employer requires them to fly out of another city on short notice). Everything from food, airline tickets, and lodgings was billed entirely to Pan Am. He was able to make a counterfeit Pan Am ID card from a sample model while posing as a businessman and obtained a FAA pilot's certificate by buying a display plaque, which he had copied and resized down to ID card form. He also obtained a Pan Am pilot's uniform by pretending to be a genuine pilot who had lost his uniform. The newspapers knew him as "Skyway Man" and "The James Bond of the Sky".
[edit] Physician
Later, he impersonated a pediatrician in a Georgia hospital, again under the name "Frank Williams". He chose to do this after nearly being caught by police after getting off a flight in New Orleans. Aware of possible capture, he retired to Georgia for the time being, and he put down his previous occupation as a doctor on an application for an apartment, for fear that the owner might check with Pan Am. After becoming friends with a real doctor who lived next door, he became a resident supervisor as a favor for him until they found someone who could take the job. He found the job not difficult, due to the fact that the supervisor does not do any actual medical work. However, as a medical layman, Abagnale was nearly discovered after almost letting a baby die of 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 rather late night shift, for example setting broken bones and other such tasks. After 11 months of working, the hospital finally found another replacement and he returned to the air.
[edit] Attorney
He also 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, all at the age of nineteen. This happened, while posing as Pan Am First Officer "Robert Black," when a flight attendant he briefly dated, and told he was also a Harvard law student, introduced him to a lawyer friend. Abagnale was told the bar needed more lawyers and was offered a chance to apply. After making a phony 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 two 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."[2]
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 him with questions about his tenure at Harvard. Naturally, Abagnale couldn't answer questions about a university he never attended, and he later resigned after eight months working to protect himself, upon learning the suspicious graduate was making several inquiries into his background.
[edit] Teacher
He purports to have forged a Columbia University degree and taught sociology at Brigham Young University for a semester working as a teaching assistant.[3] To teach the class he read a chapter ahead of his students.
[edit] Scorecard
Over 5 years he worked under 8 identities, though he used many more to cash checks, and passed bad checks worth over $2.5 million in 26 countries.
[edit] Capture and imprisonment
Eventually he was caught in France in 1969 when an Air France attendant recognized his face from a wanted poster. When the French police apprehended him, all 26 of the countries in which he had committed fraud wanted him to be extradited. He first served prison time in Perpignan's House of Arrest in France; a one year sentence that was reduced down to six months. His stay in Perpignan left him fearful of spending more time in another version of the prison.
Then he was extradited to Sweden where he was treated fairly well under the Swedish law. During trial for forgery, his defense attorney almost had his case dismissed by arguing that he "created" the fake checks and not forged them, but his charges were reduced to swindling. He served six months in a Malmö prison, only to learn at the end of it he would be tried next in Italy, where prison standards were much like that of Perpignan. Later, a judge revoked his United States passport and deported him to the U.S. to prevent further extradition. He was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison for multiple counts of forgery.[4]
[edit] Escapes
While being deported to the U.S., Abagnale claims to have escaped a British VC-10 airliner as it was turning onto a taxi strip at New York's JFK International Airport. By removing the toilet knobs in the lavatory, Abagnale squeezed through a two-foot-square hatch cover and dropped the ten feet to the tarmac below. Under cover of night he scaled a nearby fence and hailed a cab to Grand Central Station. After stopping in the Bronx to change clothes and pick up a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe-deposit box containing $20,000, Abagnale caught a train to Canada's Montreal airport to purchase a ticket to São Paulo, Brazil, a country with which the U.S. has no extradition treaty. 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 U.S. Border Patrol.
Before being sentenced to 12 years in the Federal Correction Institution at Petersburg, Virginia in April 1971, Abagnale purportedly 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, Jean Sebring, who posed as his fiancee and slipped him the business card of Inspector C.W. Dunlap of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons which she'd 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, the FBI agent in charge of Abagnale's case, which she doctored at a stationery print shop. Abagnale then told the guards that he was indeed a prison inspector and handed over Dunlap's business card as proof. He then told them that he needed to contact FBI agent, Sean O'Riley on a matter of urgent business. O'Riley's phone number 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 with O'Riley in a predetermined car outside the detention center unsupervised. Sebring, incognito, picked Abagnale up and drove him to an Atlanta bus station where he took a Greyhound 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 detectives when he inadvertently walked past their unmarked police car.
(see Abagnale's autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, chapter 10)
[edit] Legitimate jobs
In 1974, after only serving less than five years, the United States federal government released him on condition that he would help the federal authorities against fraud and scam artists—without pay.[4] After his release, Abagnale tried several jobs, from a cook, grocer, and movie projectionist, but he was fired from most of these upon having his criminal career discovered via background checks. 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.
That same year, Abagnale made an offer to the bank that if they did not find his speech helpful, they owed him nothing; otherwise, they owed him $50 and would spread his name to other banks. Naturally, they were very impressed, and he began a legitimate life as a security consultant.
He later founded Abagnale & Associates, which advises the business world on fraud, and organizes lecture tours. Through this system, he raised enough money to pay back all those he scammed over his criminal career. Abagnale is now a multi-millionaire through his legal fraud detection and avoidance consulting business based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He lives in the Midwest with his wife, whom he married one year after becoming legitimate, and three sons.
[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. Video excerpt Clips from this episode appeared in Catch Me if You Can interspersed with new footage featuring Dicaprio in his place.
In the early 1990s Abagnale 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 featured as an expert exposing various cons.
In the film Catch Me if You Can, Abagnale has a bit-part role as a french policeman who arrests his onscreen counterpart (Leonardo DiCaprio).
[edit] Books
In 2002, Abagnale wrote The Art of the Steal. In the chapters, he listed common cons and ways to prevent consumers from being defrauded. He also talked about identity theft and the advent of Internet scamming.[5]
- Catch Me if You Can, 2000. ISBN 0-7679-0538-5 (used as a source for most of the biography)
- The Art of the Steal, Broadway Books, 2001. ISBN 0-7679-0683-7
- Real U Guide To Identity Theft
- Stealing Your Life, Random House/Broadway Books, scheduled release April 2007
Abagnale has made over 20 million dollars from his three books[citation needed]
[edit] Portrayal of Abagnale
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 0-7679-0538-5), but alters many aspects of his life story for dramatic purposes.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Doubet, Phil. (2006) My Pryor Year, Phil Doubet. pp. 202-203. ISBN 0-595-39157-5.
- ^ Practicing and Evading the Law. Courtroom Television Network LLC.. Retrieved on August 13, 2006.
- ^ The art of the steal. BYU NewsNet (2005-03-11). Retrieved on August 13, 2006.
- ^ a b Conway, Allan. (2004) Analyze This, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. p. 64. ISBN 1-85648-707-5.
- ^ Ebert, Roger. (2003) Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2004, Andrews McMeel Publishing. p. 105. ISBN 0-7407-3834-8.
[edit] External links
- The Story of Frank W. Abagnale Jr. from Crime Library.com
- Official Abagnale & Associates site
- Transcript of radio interview from ABC in 2000
- Frank Abagnale at the Internet Movie Database
- Interview of Frank Abagnale with BBC News
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1948 births | American criminals | American fraudsters | Confidence tricksters | Forgers | Impostors | American Roman Catholics | French Americans | Living people | People from Westchester County, New York | Escapees
