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Frank Abagnale

Frank William Abagnale, Jr. (born April 27, 1948) 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 yearsold.
In the process, he became one of the most famous impostors ever, 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.
He served fewer than five years in prisonbefore 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.
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 ghostwrittenautobiography of the same name.


Childhood
Abagnale was one of four children and spent the first sixteen years of his life in Bronxville, New York. 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. According to Abagnale, his father did not necessarily want him, but to reunite his family, hewould 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 was a major role model for Abagnale Jr.
Frist con
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 usedthe 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
Impersonations
Airline pilot
Pan American World Airways estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Abagnale flew over 1,000,000miles 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. 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 thecontrols, 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 kite".
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.
Doctor
For eleven months he impersonated a chief residentpediatrician 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 doctorwho 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...