Catch Me If You Can: The Real Story of Frank Abagnale Jr.

 

Today we are going to talk about the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Jeff Nathanson. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, and Nathalie Baye.

The movie is based on the life of Frank Abagnale Jr. An American Security Consultant, who is known for his career as a conman, check forger, and imposter. He has become one of the most notorious imposters, taking on at least eight different identities. These identities included an airline pilot, a physician, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. He even escaped police custody twice, once from an airliner, and once from a U.S. Federal Penitentiary. The most impressive thing about it is that he did all of this before he reached the age of 22. 

What do we know about the actual crimes he committed? 

Well, Frank's first victim of fraud, was his own father. His father had given him a gasoline credit card and a truck, this was intended for Frank to use to get back and forth from work. However, Frank did a little more than that. He devised a scheme, that was both very brilliant and very foolish. He used the gasoline credit card to purchase things like tires, batteries, and other related car parts from local gas stations. Then he would ask the attendants to give him cash in return for the items. By the end of the scam, Frank had made off with $3400 which was equivalent to about $70,000 by today's standards. The most alarming thing about this scheme is that Frank was only 15 at the time. 

It wouldn't be long before Frank would move on to bank fraud. He first started this fraud by writing personal checks from his own overdrawn account. However, this scheme only worked for a limited time before the bank wanted payment. Frank would have to come up with new ways to commit fraud. Shockingly, he did. As a solution, Frank started opening other accounts at different banks, eventually, he would even create new identities to do this. However, he would develop even newer ways to defraud the banks. This included printing out his own "payroll" checks and depositing them into accounts. He would then encourage the bank to give him cash advances based on the balance of these accounts. 

He would also magnetically print his account number on blank deposit slips and add these to stacks of real deposit slips. This led to the amount on the slips entering his bank account instead of the accounts of valid customers. There were times, that Frank would pose as a security guard, and place an out-of-order sign on the deposit box, with a note saying to give all deposits to the security guard on duty. To his surprise, this scam worked just as effectively as the others. 

Frank had decided that it would make it look more legit if he impersonated a pilot when he was cashing his "paychecks". He called Pan American World Airlines (Pan Am) and claimed he was a pilot who lost his uniform when he gave it to the hotel to clean, and they believed him. He received a brand new uniform with a fake employee ID Number. Frank forged a Federal Aviation Administration Pilot's license, and he was all set. The thing about being a pilot is that you can fly for free. According to Pan Am in the period when Frank was 16 and 18 years old, he flew as a passenger more than a million miles. He flew on about 250 flights and flew to about 26 different countries deadheading all of them. Because his hair was graying at an early age it only added to the persona. In fact, it made him look even more legit making it look like he had more professional credentials than he actually had. 

Because he was a "pilot" he also had the privilege of staying in hotels free of charge. Well, not exactly free, expenses of food and lodging were always billed to the airline. Frank did have one rule, he didn't fly Pan Am out of fear that they would easily spot him as an imposter. The scariest part about the whole thing was there were plenty of times where he was invited to take the controls of a plane in flight. On one such occasion, he was asked to take a flight at 30,000 feet. He did, but he quickly put on autopilot, as he was well aware that 140 lives were in his hands, including his. 

After he was nearly arrested disembarking from a flight in New Orleans, Frank knew he had to cool it for a while. That's when he decided to temporarily retire in Georgia, and the next adventure would begin. Because for 11 months he pretended to be a chief resident pediatrician in a hospital under the alias of Frank Williams. It all started with a rental application. Frank had put "doctor" under occupation because if he had put "pilot" they might have called Pan Am. The problem was that he had befriended a real doctor who lived in the apartment complex. The real doctor had asked him a favor, and Frank agreed to act as a supervisor of resident interns. But, on the stipulation that this would only be until the hospital could find a replacement. 

His position was not solely administrative but it wasn't bad either. The interns were eager to get experience under his supervision. Therefore, he faked his way through it by letting the interns handle the cases during his late-night shift. However, he was nearly exposed as a fraud when an infant came in suffering from oxygen deprivation and Frank obviously didn't understand the term "blue baby". That was when he left the hospital, realizing that he could put lives at risk because he wasn't a real trained doctor. 

While posing as Pan Am First Officer "Robert Black" he told a flight attendant that he briefly dated that he was a Harvard Law student. She introduced him to her lawyer friend. Who told him that the bar needed more lawyers and was offered a chance to apply. Seeing an opportunity he quickly forged fake Harvard University Law transcripts and then studied for the bar exam. Which he failed the first two times, but passed on the third attempt. He achieved this in eight weeks because Louisiana allowed him to continue to take the exam as many times as he needed to. 

According to him, he worked as a "gopher boy," fetching coffee, books, and things of that nature. However, a real Harvard graduate was working at the same place as Frank. He hounded Frank about his tenure at Harvard. Frank had some trouble crafting a plausible story. After all, he was an undergraduate at a university he never actually attended. His co-worker soon became suspicious, and repeatedly interrogated him about it. The co-worker had doubts about Abagnale's education and soon contacted Harvard to confirm his academic qualifications. Finding none, the co-worker was able to convince their boss to do a background check on Frank, but Frank didn't stick around to get caught. He resigned before he could get caught, but he worked a total of 8 months as a fake attorney. 

Capture and Imprisonment:

Frank was eventually arrested in Montpellier, France, in 1969 when an Air France attendant who he had once dated had recognized him and called the police. 12 countries wanted his extradition. After a two-day trial, he first served time in a Perpignan's prison. This was a 1-year sentence that was reduced to 6 months. Then he was extradited to Sweden for a trial for forgery. His defense attorney almost had the case dismissed. He argued that Frank had created fake checks, and had not actually forged them. Those charges were reduced to swindling and fraud. Following this conviction, he served another 6 months in a Malmo prison. He would then learn that he would be tried in Italy next, only that wouldn't happen. Because a Swedish judge would ask a US state department official to revoke Frank's passport, and he would then be deported back to the United States. Where he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for multiple accounts of forgery. 

While being deported back to the United States, Frank escaped from a British VC-10 airliner as it was turning onto a taxiway at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was under the cover of the night as he scaled a nearby fence. Then he hailed a taxi cab, which he took to Grand Central Terminal. After he stopped in the Bronx for a change of clothing and to pick up a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe deposit box containing $20,000. This was equal to about $100,000 today. From which Frank caught a train to Montreal's Dorval airport. (Now known as Montreal-Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport). His intention was to buy a ticket to São Paulo, Brazil. There was a close call at a Convenience store, but after that, he was apprehended by a constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while he was standing in line at the ticket counter. He was then handed back over to the United States. 

In April of 1971, he was able to escape from Federal Detention Center in Atlanta Georgia. U.S. prisons were condemned by civil rights groups and investigated by congressional committees. While Frank was being transferred the U.S. Marshal forget his detention commitment papers. Because of this mix-up, Frank was mistaken for an undercover prison inspector. He was given special privileges and food, far better than the other inmates. Frank took advantage of this mistake and contacted a friend of his, Jean Sebring. Who arrived at the prison pretending to be his finance. 

She slipped him a business card belonging to inspector CW Dunlap of the Bureau of Prisons. She obtained this card by posing as a freelance writer who was writing an article on ire safety measures in federal detention centers. She also gave him the business card of the agent, Sean O'Riley, which turned out to be Joseph Shea. He was the FBI agent in charge of Abagnale's case. Jean had doctored the card at a stationery print shop. Frank then told corrections officers that he was an inspector and handed over Dunlap's business card as proof. He then told them that he needed to contact FBI agent Sean O'Riley, that it was urgent business. 

The phone number was altered by Jean, and when Frank called the number it was really the number for a phonebooth in an Atlanta shopping center. Jean answered the phone and pretended to be the operator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was granted permission to meet with O'Riley, unsupervised in a predetermined car outside the detention center. It was Jean waiting in the car, and they simply drove away. 

She drove him to an Atlanta bus station where he took a Greyhound bus to New York and later made his way to Washington D.C. However, he would only be free for a few weeks before he was picked up by two NYPD officers after he walked past their unmarked car. 

Legit Jobs: 

In 1974, after Frank served less than 7 years of his 12-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg, Virginia, the US federal government released Frank under the condition that Frank would help the federal authorities without pay, to investigate crimes committed by fraud and scam artists. He was also required to sign in once a week. Frank was unwilling to return to his family in New York, so left it up to the government to decide where he was going to live. It turned out to be 

Houston, Texas. 

After his release, Frank tried several jobs. Including cook, grocery, and movie projectionists. However, Frank would be fired from these jobs due to his criminal past. Finding this unsatisfactory, he approached a bank with an offer. Frank told them straight up who he was and what he had done. He then offered to educate the staff to show them various tricks that paperhangers use to defraud banks. He promised that if the bank didn't find him useful, they didn't have to pay him. However, if they did find his information useful, they would owe him $50 and must agree to pass his name along to other banks. Thus, Frank started a legitimate business as a  security consultant. 

In 2015, Frank was named the AARP Fraud Watch Ambassador. There he helps to provide online programs and community forums to educate people in ways to protect themselves from identity theft and cybercrime. And, in 2018 Frank began to co-host the AARP podcast, The Perfect Scam. The podcast is about scammers and how they operate. 

Frank lives in South Carolina, with his wife Kelly who he met working undercover for the FBI. They have three sons. Scott, Chris, and Sean. Scott works for the FBI. 

Development for the film had actually started in 1980 but it wasn't until 1997 that things really came together when Spielberg's Dreamworks bought the rights to Frank's 1980 book by the same name. The film opened on December 25th, 2002, and received both critical and commercial success. Even though Frank had very little to do with the movie, he believed that Spielberg was the only filmmaker worthy of doing the story justice. Even with the various changes to the real-life events. 

For instance, the real Abagnale never saw his father again after he ran away. Abagnale has only seen the movie twice but has said that he was not an only child as portrayed in the film. In reality, he has two brothers and a sister. In real life, his mother never remarried nor did she have another child. He also actually escaped off the plane through the kitchen gallery. The place where they bring food and stuff onto the plane. Not out through the toilet, like he escaped in the movie. 

However, even with these differences, the movie is worth the watch if you've never seen it. Leonardo DiCaprio does an excellent job portraying Frank, and Tom Hanks is awesome playing the FBI agent that's hot on his tail.