Frank Abagnale

Introduction

Frank William Abagnale Jr., at the age of 16 and shortly after discovering that his parents were separating, left his house with a little bag containing a checkbook and traveled to New York's Grand Central Station.
In the six years that followed, Abagnale became a notorious impersonator, conducting cons that baffled FBI investigators.
Abagnale, who stood 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall and passed as a young adult, altered one digit on his driver's license to boost his age to 26 and then obtained a job as a delivery boy.
Infuriated with his income, he began writing bad checks.
Abagnale went to Miami while the police were already looking for him as a fugitive.

Abagnale had an inspiration as he passed a hotel in the city: he could pretend to be a pilot, travel the globe, and never have trouble cashing checks.
He said that the hotel he was staying at had misplaced his outfit the next day when he contacted Pan American World Airways and requested the purchasing department.
They led him to their supplier in New York, who fitted him for a brand-new outfit.
Abagnale created a Pan Am pilot's license out of adhesive stickers from a miniature Pan Am aircraft and discovered he could use it to fly for free thanks to an airline policy that provided free trips to each other's pilots.

Frank Abagnale has a strong and persistent desire to atone for his sins.
He was first assigned to the FBI as part of his conditional release, and he is still connected to the agency 42 years later.
He also refuses to take paid for any official job he has done.
Additionally, three separate Presidents have offered Abagnale pardons, but he has declined them, stating that "a paper won't justify my deeds; only my actions can."
Abagnale has established himself as a well-known authority on fraud prevention, security, and personal and corporate identity theft by using his special skill set for good.
Abagnale established his own security firm in 1976, and 14,000 businesses, law enforcement organizations, and financial institutions all across the globe have adopted his fraud prevention strategies.
Joseph Shea, the agent in charge of the investigation against him, and Abagnale became close. They remained friends until Shea's death in 2005.

After serving as a "pilot" for two years, he relocated to Utah, adopted the name Frank Adams, faked a credential, and was employed for one semester as a sociology professor at Brigham Young University.
Abagnale next succeeded on his third attempt at the Louisiana state bar test despite never having attended law school.
The business law section of the Louisiana Attorney General's office hired him to work as a legal assistant.
After a year, Abagnale quit his employment because a lawyer began to doubt his qualifications.
Then, while under the pseudonym of Dr. Frank Williams, he pretended to be a pediatrician while working at a hospital in Georgia.
He handed phony checks and bogus bank deposit slips the whole time, effectively establishing a trail for the FBI to follow.

In 1969, Abagnale was ultimately caught in France.
He was supposed to be deported to the US, but he got off the plane and ran away to Canada, where he was caught again in Montreal. Frank Abagnale's "professions" followed.
Using the guise of an undercover prison guard, the airline pilot escaped once again and traveled to Washington, D.C., where he barely avoided detection by masquerading as an FBI agent.
By happenstance, he was apprehended as he passed two NYPD investigators in an unmarked police vehicle.
Abagnale was given a 12-year jail term, but after serving four years of that time, he was allowed to be freed on the condition that he serve the rest of his time working for the FBI.
Later, Abagnale established a security firm that offered guidance to banks on preventing and detecting fraud.
Steven Spielberg made a movie of his 1980 biography, Catch Me If You Can, which was released in 2002.

1874: James Reavis, a master forger, crafts paperwork in order to get land in Arizona and New Mexico, then sells property titles for more than $5 million.
1992: Michael Sabo, a cheque forger and a master imposter from Pennsylvania, has been found guilty of bank fraud, forgery, grand robbery, and identity theft.
1998: John Ruffo, a former US bank executive, he defrauds many banks out of $350 million (£280 million); he is apprehended and sentenced to 17 years in prison, but he vanishes on the day he is to begin his sentence.