Frank Abagnale

Frank William Abagnale Jr. (; born April 27, 1948) is an American-French security consultant, author, and convicted felon whose documented crimes consist primarily of check fraud and petty theft targeting individuals and small businesses. These claims formed the basis of his 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, co-written with Stan Redding. The book inspired the film of the same name, directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Journalistic investigations beginning in 1978 found no evidence to support most of Abagnale's biographical claims. In 2020, author Alan C. Logan published an investigation drawing on public records, prison documents, and newspaper archives that concluded the majority of Abagnale's claimed criminal history was fabricated. Abagnale runs Abagnale and Associates, a consulting firm he founded in 1976.

The 2002 Spielberg film brought Abagnale's story to a wide audience and cemented his public profile as a reformed con man turned fraud prevention expert. Abagnale made a cameo appearance in the film as a French police officer. A Broadway musical adaptation opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on April 10, 2011, ran for 170 performances, and received four Tony Award nominations, with Norbert Leo Butz winning Best Actor in a Musical.

Early life

Frank William Abagnale Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York City, on April 27, 1948, to a French Pied-noir mother and an Italian-American father. He spent his early years in Bronxville, New York. His parents separated when he was 12 and divorced when he was 15, after which he moved with his father and stepmother to Mount Vernon, New York.

In his autobiography, Abagnale describes his first fraud as charging $3,400 to a gasoline credit card his father had given him. He claims this led to his being sent to a reform school in Westchester County, New York run by Catholic Charities USA.

In December 1964, Abagnale enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 16. He was discharged after less than three months, released on February 18, 1965. Less than two weeks later, he was arrested for petty larceny in Mount Vernon. In March 1965, he posed as a police officer and entered the apartment of a Mount Vernon resident, claiming to investigate her daughter. The victim called police, who found Abagnale with a toy gun and a paper badge. He was arrested on a vagrancy charge and ordered the following day to be committed to Grasslands psychiatric institute for observation.

In June 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Abagnale in Eureka, California, for stealing a Ford Mustang from a neighbor of his father. He had financed a cross-country trip with blank checks stolen from a family business on the Bronx River Parkway. On July 7, 1965, Abagnale informed local media that he was a graduate of an American Airlines pilot school in Fort Worth, Texas, but was arrested days later for check theft in Tuckahoe, New York. Detectives the following day determined he had also stolen blank checks from his host family and a local business; he was charged with theft and forgery, convicted on June 2, 1969, and sentenced to 12 years of supervised probation. He soon fled to Europe.

Europe

Two weeks after a Louisiana bench warrant was issued, Abagnale was arrested in Montpellier, France, in September 1969, after stealing an automobile and defrauding two families in Klippan, Sweden. He was sentenced to four months for theft in France and served approximately three months in a prison in Perpignan.

He was then extradited to Sweden, where he was convicted of gross fraud by forgery, served two months in a Malmö prison, and was banned from Sweden for eight years. He was deported back to the United States in June 1970 after his appeal failed.

United States

After returning to the United States, Abagnale traveled around college campuses passing bad checks and claiming to recruit stewardesses for Pan Am. At the University of Arizona in 1970, he posed as both a pilot and a physician and conducted physical examinations on female students who believed they were applying to a flight attendant program. University of Arizona officials confirmed that Abagnale had interacted with 12 female students. with an additional two years for the jail escape. Later that year, he was arrested again at a children's summer camp in Friendswood, Texas, for stealing cameras from co-workers while posing as a pilot. After receiving a fine, he obtained a position at a Houston-area orphanage by falsely claiming a pilot's credentials and a master's degree. His parole officer discovered the deception and moved him into quarters above his own home. Abagnale subsequently took a position at Aetna, from which he was fired and sued for check fraud.

In 1975, Abagnale approached a bank and offered to educate its staff on the techniques used by check forgers, proposing that if they found his information unhelpful they would owe him nothing, and if useful, they would pay him a modest fee and recommend him to other banks. The arrangement worked, and it became the basis of a new career as a fraud prevention speaker and consultant. He has appeared multiple times as a guest on The Tonight Show and made a regular appearance on the British network series The Secret Cabaret in the 1990s. In 2015, AARP named him its Fraud Watch Ambassador, and in 2018, he began co-hosting the AARP podcast The Perfect Scam. He has also appeared on To Tell the Truth and served as an appointed member of various fraud and identity theft advisory bodies.

Cultural legacy

Steven Spielberg directed the film adaptation, Catch Me If You Can, released in December 2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Abagnale and Tom Hanks as ficticious FBI agent Carl Hanratty pursuing him. Christopher Walken, who portrayed Abagnale's father, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Abagnale appeared in a brief cameo as the French police officer who arrests DiCaprio's character.

Veracity of claims

Beginning in the late 1970s, Abagnale claimed in public lectures and interviews that between the ages of 16 and 21 he had impersonated a Pan American pilot, a Georgia hospital physician, a Louisiana assistant attorney general, and a sociology professor, while evading a sustained FBI manhunt across 26 countries and cashing more than $2.5 million in fraudulent checks. Journalists who investigated these claims beginning in 1978 found them to be largely or entirely unsupported. Individuals whom Abagnale had criminally targeted described the lasting effects of his actual, documented offenses:

The Louisiana attorney general claim

Abagnale claimed that he passed the Louisiana bar examination, worked for Attorney General Jack P. F. Gremillion, and closed 33 cases. These claims were challenged by journalists as early as 1978. In 1978, the Louisiana State Bar Association reviewed all bar exam records and concluded Abagnale had never taken the exam under his name or any alias; the state attorney general's office examined payroll records for the period Abagnale claimed to have worked there and found no trace of him.

The Georgia pediatrician claim

Abagnale claimed to have worked for a year as a supervising pediatrician at Cobb General Hospital in Marietta, Georgia, overseeing seven residents and 42 nurses on a midnight-to-8 am shift. Hospital administrators told journalist Ira Perry that no such overnight pediatrician shift existed at the hospital during the period in question.

The BYU professor claim

In public lectures, Abagnale claimed to have taught sociology for two semesters at Brigham Young University (BYU) using a falsified doctorate. In 2006, KSL-TV journalist Scott Haws challenged Abagnale on this claim, presenting his own published words as evidence. Abagnale initially said he could not recall the details and attributed the claim to his co-author Stan Redding. Haws then showed him that the claim appeared in materials Abagnale himself had authored, including the film's closing credits. Abagnale ultimately conceded he may have been a guest lecturer.

Claims regarding the FBI

In the years following the release of Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale increasingly claimed a long and formal relationship with the FBI. He told audiences he had been placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list as a teenager, that he was granted a special parole in 1974 or 1975 to conduct undercover work for the bureau, that he received assignments directly from Director Clarence M. Kelley, and that he worked as an ethics instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. By 2014, he was publicly stating that he was celebrating 38 years at the FBI.

Journalist Ira Perry found in 1978 that Abagnale and his publicist were directing inquiries to a retired FBI official, Robert Russ Franck, whom they described as a former Atlanta agent familiar with Abagnale's case. Franck, who had in fact retired as head of the FBI's Houston Division and had never worked in Atlanta, told Perry he had never met Abagnale and could not verify any of his claims. Retired FBI agent Jerri Williams, a white-collar crime specialist, rejected his claims of receiving assignments directly from Director Kelley: "If anybody tells you that they got an assignment directly from the FBI director, right from the head of the FBI, you know for a fact it's bullshit. It doesn't happen that way." When the film was released, an FBI spokesperson confirmed that Abagnale had given lectures at the academy "from time to time," but denied that the bureau had given him commendations as claimed in the film's marketing. In September 2022, retired FBI agent Alan Brown confirmed to journalist Javier Leiva that Abagnale's 1970 arrest in Marietta, Georgia, was a routine response to a teletype request; Abagnale was found in his hotel room without incident, contrary to the dramatic escape depicted in the film.

In August 2022, Google disabled comments on Abagnale's "Talks at Google" video and added a disclaimer stating that Google did not endorse or vouch for the content, noting the video was being retained for historical purposes.

Logan and Leiva investigations

In 2020, author Alan C. Logan published The Greatest Hoax on Earth, an investigation into Abagnale's claimed criminal history drawing on prison records, administrative documents, and newspaper archives. Logan demonstrated using New York State Archives records that Abagnale was incarcerated at Great Meadow Prison as inmate #25367 from July 26, 1965, to December 24, 1968, the precise period during which Abagnale claimed to have committed his most celebrated frauds. Logan's research also documented numerous petty crimes Abagnale had never publicly acknowledged.

In 2022, investigative journalist Javier Leiva independently verified Logan's findings, confirmed federal court records showing Abagnale's Pan Am check conviction involved less than $1,500, and calculated that Abagnale was free for only a matter of months between 1965 and 1970. On June 23, 2022, Leiva confronted Abagnale at the Connect IT Global conference in Las Vegas with prison and court records in hand.

On September 12, 2022, Xavier University in Cincinnati presented Abagnale with a "Heroes in Ethics" award. At the conclusion of his lecture, an audience member asked Abagnale whether he would acknowledge that his stories were fabricated. Abagnale denied telling any lies and stated he had no responsibility for the content of his autobiography, the film, or the Broadway musical. Xavier University subsequently removed all online reference to the event. Despite this concession, he continued to make the long-term impersonation claims in subsequent public appearances. Abagnale's speaking fee has been reported to be between $20,000 and $30,000.

Books

The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can, Alan C. Logan, 2020.
Catch Me If You Can, 1980.
The Art of the Steal, Broadway Books, 2001.
Real U Guide to Identity Theft, 2004.
Stealing Your Life, Random House/Broadway Books, 2007.
Scam Me If You Can, 2019.