Frank Abagnale - Catch Him If You Can

by Read Listen Learn

Frank Abagnale is now a very respectable figure. Well-dressed in an expensive suit and tie, he has an impressive profile as the head of his own, very successful financial fraud consultancy, Abagnale Associates. Banks and corporations pay his company a fee to come and look at their operation and tell them where they may be vulnerable to fraud by their employees or the public. They also train the staff to detect fraudsters and con artists and their endless variety of tricks.

And why is Frank Abagnale so good at this? Why do banks pay him so well to overhaul their security and train their staff? There is an old English saying: "Set a thief to catch a thief". It means that the person who best understands the minds and methods of criminals and so is best at catching them is another criminal. And that, essentially, is the basis of Frank Abagnale's business. The man who closes loopholes for banks and warns corporations about new styles of fraud was once one of the most active, inventive and successful con men North America has ever produced.

In order to understand master con men, we often go back to their childhood only to discover that they had a well-to-do and stable middle-class upbringing, full of professional and educational opportunities. It seems a paradox at first but we must consider a number of factors. The con man's crime is a special one that requires little physical strength but he needs to be able to sound knowledgeable about a variety of different subjects. In other words, con men need to be educated. And it is this air of education and middle-class respectability that are essential to the con man's trade. A well-spoken man in an expensive suit who seems to know a lot is immediately easier to trust, respect and admire. For the con man, once they have someone's trust, the rest is plain sailing.

But that leaves the question of why a person of education with lots of family support and job opportunities would turn to cheating people for money. The answer seems to be that many con men enjoy the challenge. Thinking of new scams, acting a part, charming young women into helping them – they are exceptionally talented at these things. Also, they enjoy mischief and notoriety.

That would explain Frank Abagnale's decision to be a fraudster and con artist. He wasn't poor, his father was a successful, local, Italian-American businessman and, at first, something of a role model for young Frank. However, when he was sixteen, his parents got divorced and Frank ran from the hearing never to see his father again. This, more than anything else, was the trauma that drove Abagnale to choose a life of crime.

His father was his first victim. When he was still fifteen, his father gave him a petrol station credit card and a van so that he could get to and from his part-time, after school, job. Frank soon discovered that the card could buy anything that the petrol station sold, like tyres or batteries, not just petrol. What he also discovered was that, if he took his purchase back and demanded a refund, the shop assistant would give him the money back in cash. In this way, he cashed back thousands of dollars to himself but the party came to an abrupt end when his father started to get the credit card bills.

After this, Abagnale decided to take things a little further from home. He started to defraud banks in various ways using cheques. It was a bit hit and miss at first but he learned quickly without getting himself into serious trouble. Let's look at just two of the frauds he developed:

He would often go into banks and, using a children's printing kit, he would print his own account number on all the deposit slips that are left on the counter for customers who want to pay in. These customers would not think about the official-looking number on the slip and so their money would go into Frank's account – in a false name.

In a different style of con, he would wait until the bank closed, then put a sign on the night deposit box saying: 'Out of Order, please leave money with security guard'. The local shopkeepers and businessmen would give the money to the pleasant young security guard standing next to the box – who was, in fact, Frank Abagnale in a guard's uniform bought from a theatrical supplier.

Next, Frank moved on to defrauding airlines. Airlines which often had huge payrolls and financial systems as big as many banks but without most of the security checks banks would use. Often an airline pilot's uniform and a winning smile were all the ID he needed to cash a large cheque with an airline branch office. Abagnale admits, though, that his time impersonating airline pilots was as much about having fun, travelling the world and impressing young women as it was about making money.

The airlines were aware of his existence, especially his favourite, PanAm, and they put a lot of effort into catching him but he managed to stay one step ahead. And, when things got too hot for Frank in the airline world, he decided to impersonate a doctor and, for eleven months, he worked as a senior children's doctor.

His seniority allowed him to delegate almost all the hands-on medical work to juniors but, a couple of times, Abagnale had to perform a medical procedure. Once, he nearly caused the death of a baby. He decided that he didn't want a death on his hands and so he switched to being a lawyer, passed the Louisiana state law exam and continued in the profession for a year – until a suspicious colleague started looking into his background. Abagnale felt it was time for a visit overseas and left for his mother's native France dressed as an American airline pilot. A flight attendant he had briefly dated spotted him and the police arrested him.

Abagnale spoke fluent French, a legacy from his mother, and it was now to stand him in good stead as he spent six months in a French prison. Once the French had finished with him they gave him to Sweden where he spent a further six months in prison for crimes he had committed there. After this, the Italians were rather hoping to have him for a while but he was deported back to the U.S. and given twelve years prison time for his numerous fraudulent activities there.

He escaped a couple of times in very resourceful ways when he was in the U.S. system but, in the end, he served five years of his sentence and then he was paroled on the condition that he work together with the F.B.I. in tracking down bank fraudsters. The work was unpaid.

After trying a few lowly but honest jobs and losing them all as soon as his employers discovered his prison and criminal past, Abagnale walked into a bank, explained himself to the managers and said he would like to give a talk to their staff on how to identify and stop con men. Abagnale said that if they didn't want to pay him afterwards, then that was O.K. but, if they felt the talk was good value, they could pay him $500 for it and pass his name on to other banks.

They paid him his five hundred dollars and recommended him to others and from these beginnings grew Abagnale Associates Financial Fraud consultancy. Frank Abagnale, now in his sixties, married and had three sons. One of his sons works for the F.B.I.