Frank Abagnale - New Life 
 

Summary:

In a five year spree of forgery, fraud and impersonation an American called Frank Abagnale earned himself a reputation as America's most gifted con man. Arrested and sentenced to 12 years jail at the end of the 60's, the 26 year old was given a second chance by the American government - early release in return for his skill and expertise. As a secure document consultant to the FBI and thousands of corporations around the world, including the company that producs Australia's passports and credit cards, he is now known as one of the world's leading experts on document fraud. We talk to him about his early life and how he learned to live on the right side of the law. 

Transcript:

Norman Swan: We’re going to stay with some of the aberrations and unusual things that happen in the United States, because back in the 1960s a young American by the name of Frank Abagnale was earning himself a reputation as the country’s most talented and notorious con man.

In a five-year spree of forgery and fraud, he impersonated his way around the United States, assuming and divesting himself of identities as he went: doctor, lawyer, and pilot, amongst his many different get-ups.

But five years after his first fraud, and $2-million the richer, the law finally caught up with him. And after another five years in a Federal prison, he was offered early release on one condition: that he work for the Government to fight white collar crime. And that’s exactly what he’s been doing for the last 25 years, as an adviser to the FBI and thousands of international corporations and businesses, and he’s earned himself a reputation as one of the world’s leading experts on document fraud.

He’s currently in Australia, lecturing business on security measures in the lead-up to the September Olympics. But how did Frank Abagnale make the transition from Ripley-like rogue, to Joe Citizen?

Frank Abagnale: Oh I think just as a child, I was very creative, and I remember back when I first got my driver’s licence, I asked my father if I could have a gas credit card to use, and that I would pay the gas bill, and so he and I having the same name, me being a junior, he gave me one of his cards for Mobil gas, and he said, ‘Go ahead and just use this, and then you be responsible for the bill’, and several months later the Mobil people were calling my father because they wanted to know how he could possibly have a gas bill over $2500, and my father said, ‘What?’ and what I would do is, I would go into a gas station and I would say to the attendant that I’d like to buy four brand-new tyres, and he’d pull them down off the rack and I’d give him the credit card, and he’d get an authorisation and then he’d say, ‘OK, you want me to put them on?’ and I’d say ‘No, but I’ll sell them back to you for 50% of what they’re worth, and if you give me the money, that way you’ll get the money from Mobil, plus you get to keep the tyres.’ And they always said Yes. So I was always able to get spending money that way.

Norman Swan: And you didn’t have the slightest qualm that you were actually doing your old man out of money?

Frank Abagnale: I think back when I was just so young that I really wasn’t, it was just a matter of doing it and I wasn’t really thinking about who was going to pay for it or what was going to happen with it.

Norman Swan: What really launched you on your career in these nefarious activities?

Frank Abagnale: Well more so that when shortly thereafter my father and mother got a divorce. I was one of four children and a judge in the court proceeding asked me to choose my mother or my father to live with, and I didn’t really want to make that choice, and I was kind of stubborn, I just walked out of the court room, and basically ran away from home. And back in the ‘60s in the United States, running away was a very common thing unfortunately; a lot of kids got caught up in Haight Ashbury and the hippy scene, the drug scene, but I just ended up in New York City, and had to find a way to support myself.

Norman Swan: And how did you do that?

Frank Abagnale: Well again, no-one wanted to hire a 16-year-old, but I was 6-foot tall, I had grey hair, my friends always said I looked more like I was 28 years old. So I changed my date of birth on my driver’s licence, and back then they were like an IBM card, they didn’t have a picture, and I was actually born in April of 1948, but I dropped that ‘4’ and converted it to a ‘3’ and that made me a 26-year-old, and I started, just took on that identity of being 10 years older than I was, and that led to all the different jobs I took on, and all the different things I did.

Norman Swan: And tell me the story of you opening this bank account, which was one of the first things that you did in New York.

Frank Abagnale: And I was very much an opportunist. I mean I didn’t really sit there and premeditate these things. I didn’t have a genius mind and say, ‘I’ll do this’, but things would come to me and I went into a bank to open a cheque account with $100 which was all I had, with the contention that the bank would then print me cheques, and I had this phoney identification that I could go out and pass these cheques. So I walked in and opened the account. But when the New Accounts person came back, they said, ‘Here’s your temporary cheques, and we’ll be mailing you your printed cheques in about ten days.’ And because I was young, I was inquisitive. I said, ‘Well what about deposit slips?’ and she said, ‘No, they come from the cheque print, and they’ll be with your cheque book. But in the meantime, if you need to make a deposit, you can just go over to the table in the lobby of the bank, take a blank deposit slip, write your account number in, and just use that number until you get your printed ones.’ So I walked over and I took a big stack of them off the shelf, and I went back to my hotel, but I couldn’t sleep; I kept staring at them, and I thought to myself, ‘I wonder’. So I bought some magnetic ink, the ink that banks use to encode numbers on account numbers and cheques, and I encoded my account number that the bank had assigned to me the day before. I then went back to the bank and put this stack onto the shelf in the bank, and everyone who came in, put their cheque right in my bank account.

Norman Swan: How much did you make that way?

Frank Abagnale: About $40,000.

Norman Swan: And you were never found out?

Frank Abagnale: Later on I think they realised it was me, but not then they didn’t know who it was.

Norman Swan: And you changed identity on many occasions. Tell me some of the identities you’ve had and how you’ve done it.

Frank Abagnale: Well I impersonated a pilot for two years for Pan Am, and that was for the reason of being able to fly all over the world for free, so I would basically board these planes and ride the jumpseat, deadheading from city to city, on different airlines. So I’d be a Pan Am pilot on a TWA flight riding and deadheading. And then when I would get to a city I would be able to stay where the airline crew stayed, so I didn’t have to pay for the room, the room was billed to the airline.

Norman Swan: So what, you had a uniform and a passcard for Pan Am, that sort of thing?

Frank Abagnale: Right. And how I did that it was really quite simple. I called Pan American Airlines corporate headquarters and asked to speak to somebody in Purchasing. And when they came on, I simply said that I was a Pan Am pilot, and that I’d flown into New York the night before and I’d sent my uniform out to be dry cleaned, but now the dry cleaner in the hotel say they can’t find it, and that I had a flight in a few hours and no uniform. He said, ‘What about a spare uniform?’ I said ‘Yes, back home where I’m based in San Francisco, but I’d never get it here for my flight.’ He said, ‘Well you understand this would cost you, not the company, the price of a new uniform.’ I said, ‘Yes’, and he came back and said, ‘You’d need to go down to the Well Built Uniform Company on 5th Avenue, that’s our supplier or vendor, and they’ll take care of you. And I went down there and they fitted me out in the uniform, and when they were done they told me the uniform was $286, and I said, ‘Well I’ll write you a cheque,’ and of course the cheques were no good. But he said, ‘No, we can’t take any cheques.’ So I said, ‘Oh well then, I’ll just pay you cash.’ He said, ‘No, we can’t accept cash.’ He said, ‘You have to fill out this computer card, and in these boxes put your employee number, then we bill this back under Uniform Allowance, and it comes out of your next Pan Am paycheque.’ And I said, ‘Well that’s even better, go ahead and do that.’

Norman Swan: And you just invented a number?

Frank Abagnale: Yes, just made up a number and left with the uniform.

Norman Swan: And how did you get your passcard?

Frank Abagnale: That was a little bit trickier, but I thought that was going to be impossible when I realised you had to have the ID card and I saw how sophisticated they looked. And I went back to my hotel and I happened to notice the yellow pages for New York City sitting up there, and I pulled down this huge book and I opened it, and I looked under the word ‘Identification’, and there were three or four pages of companies who made convention badges, metal badges, plastic badges, police badges, so I started to call around, and finally one company said, ‘Listen, most of those airline ID cards are made by Kodak, by Polaroid, by the 3M company, you need to call one of them.’ So I finally got the 3M company on the phone in New York, and they said, ‘Yes, we manufacture Pan Am’s identification system, how come?’ I said, ‘I’m a Purchasing Officer for a major airline, but I’m in New York just for the day. We’re getting ready to expand our routes, hire a lot of new employees and we’re going to go to a formal ID card.’ And I said, ‘I wondered if I could come down to your office this afternoon just briefly to discuss quantity and price.’ He said, ‘By all means come on down.’ 

So I went down and after we talked a while I said, ‘Is there a way that I could get a sample to bring back?’ And at first he brought me out a coloured piece of paper with a picture of an ID card in the middle of it, kind of blown up with a name John Doe, and then someone else’s picture and in bold red ink across the front ‘This is a sample only’, and I said, ‘No, don’t you have the actual card?’ And I said, ‘By the way, what’s all this equipment on the floor?’ He said, ‘Well we don’t just sell this card, we sell the system, camera, laminator.’ ‘Oh, we’d have to buy all of this?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well I tell you what, since we have to buy it all, why don’t you just demonstrate how it works, and use me?’ So I sat down, he made up the card with my picture. 

When I was going down the elevator I noticed that this plastic card that was much like a credit card, though it had the colours of Pan Am, it had no logo, no name, nothing that mentioned it was Pan Am’s card. And I was pretty discouraged because it was a plastic card, you couldn’t type on it, you couldn’t write on it, and I was walking back to the hotel and I noticed I passed a hobby shop. So I walked in and said, ‘Do you sell models of planes?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you have model planes of commercial jetliners?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ And I bought a model of a Pan Am 707 cargo jet for about $2.40, got back to my room, took all the parts out and there at the bottom of the box were the decals that went on the model, and I took the little Pan Am logo that would have went on the tail and put it right on the top of the card, and the word ‘Pan Am’ in the special styling of graphics that would have went on the fuselage, I just put it across the top of the card and it the clear decal made a perfect identification card.

Norman Swan: And we haven’t got time to go through the whole story, but you masqueraded as a lawyer at one point?

Frank Abagnale: Yes, a lawyer, a doctor.

Norman Swan: You even passed Bar exams.

Frank Abagnale: Yes.

Norman Swan: Without a basic law degree. You were a doctor, a paediatrician?

Frank Abagnale: Yes, in a hospital for about a year.

Norman Swan: Although you weren’t in clinical care, you were doing doctor administrator.

Frank Abagnale: Correct.

Norman Swan: You’ve done all this. Now today I suppose you’d naively think, I mean before we get on to the sort of personality side of this, you’d naively think that a lot of this today would be impossible, because as soon as you entered it into a computer, the mismatch would become obvious. So do you think that the things that you did several years ago would be impossible today?

Frank Abagnale: No, the truth is what I did 30 years ago, is 200 times easier to do today than it was then, and five years from now will be 700 times easier than it is today, and that’s because of one word, technology. Technology breeds crime, and it always has. When I did these things 30 years ago, if I had to make a cheque, I literally had to print the cheque, so I had to be a skilled printer, I had to know how to do colour separations, make negatives, make plates, and it was very time consuming and tedious. Today, sitting at home in an apartment with a PC, a scanner, a colour printer, an inkjet printer or a colour copier, you can reproduce just about any type of document, including currency and paper. So just technology alone has made it. Now it may be a little more difficult to go through airports today because of hijackings and terrorism, which didn’t exist when I did it; there was no such thing as airport security as there is now. But if you really going to ask ‘Could I walk through the security area of an airport today?’ I’m sure I could make up a plastic card that literally was a lousy replication and pass the security. The security is not very good at all. So it’s not as difficult.

Norman Swan: To what extent is forgery, being conned today, technologically independent? In other words, you might get the technology right, but if you’ve not got the personality for it, I mean how much of it is actually about the relationship that you create with other people?

Frank Abagnale: I think that is a big difference. I think 30 years ago you had to be a con man, you had to live a chameleon existence; you had to be someone who was creative and someone who was very persuasive, because you were taking something and replicating it, not perfectly, and you had to sell the person, make the person believe it was real, convince the person they should cash it. Where today, you’re able to make the traveller’s cheque or that counterfeit bill so good that really it doesn’t take a great deal to walk up and pass it, and the person who’s accepting it today is so much more less trained today. Thirty years ago, bank tellers were professional employees with hours and months of training. Today banks don’t want to pay benefits, so they don’t hire full time employees, they hire part time help, and there’s very little training. So if a bank teller can’t tell me the difference between a good bill and a bad bill, then what can they tell me in the hotel lobby, or in the retail store? And because of lack of training and the ability to make the document look so good, it’s very simple to do today.

Norman Swan: How were you caught?

Frank Abagnale: I was arrested when I was 21 for the first and only time by the French Police, because an Air France stewardess recognised me from a Wanted poster, and notified the authorities. 

Norman Swan: How come you were on a Wanted poster?

Frank Abagnale: Ah well, because the FBI and Interpol, I had been doing this for five years, I’d been doing it in 26 countries, and they had warrants and posters out looking for me. And this person recognised me and I was arrested by the French Police. And once the Police arrested me and notified Interpol that I was in custody, then all 26 countries filed warrants for my arrest and extradition.

Norman Swan: How many times did you have to move city location in that five year period?

Frank Abagnale: Oh constantly. I mean you have to be constantly on the go. It is not a glamorous life, it’s a very lonely life, because everyone you meet believes you to be somebody you’re not. You really can’t seriously have a relationship with anyone, because you’re using a phoney name and you’re lying, and so you really can’t get involved with anyone.

Norman Swan: Did you ever admit to anybody that you had a relationship with, what you did?

Frank Abagnale: Just once. When I was about 18 I had dated a flight attendant for a long period of time, and she was getting very serious about me, and I one day took a bicycle ride from her home with her down to the park, and I said to her, ‘I need to tell you something. First of all, I’m not a pilot.’ ‘Well that’s impossible because I saw you on the plane and I met you in the cockpit.’ I said, ‘No, let me explain what I’m doing. and second I’m not 30 years old, but I’m 18 years old, and I’m only telling you this because I don’t want to hurt you, and I’m wanted by the Police, and the Police are looking for me, and I’ve run away from home.’ And she cried a little bit and she thought about it for a little bit, and then she said, ‘OK, I understand, but I’m going to go back to the house.’ And I said, ‘Well why don’t you go back’, and then I said, ‘I’ll be back in 10 or 15 minutes.’ And after that 15 minutes I rode down on the bike, and I went down the back neighbourhood, and as I thought, there were all the Police cars in front of her house, waiting for me. And unfortunately, being 18 years old, 17, 18 whatever I was, I took that as a complete, OK, see, if you’re not a pilot or if you’re not parading as somebody, then people don’t like you. And if you don’t have a lot of money, then people don’t care about you. And the minute I told this person the truth, they turned on me. 

But then when I got to be 19, 20, 21 years old and I looked back at that, I realised that this woman was an adult and she was saying to herself, ‘Well this is some kid, he’s run away from home, the police are looking for him. Somebody needs to alert the authorities to stop this guy before something serious happens.’

Norman Swan: Were you a liar as a child? I mean people who do this sort of thing are often pathological liars who find it difficult to distinguish between truth and fiction.

Frank Abagnale: I don’t think I was a real liar. I think I was just somebody who was always looking for the creative, the simple way to do it. And that hasn’t changed today. I mean I look at things today that I see and I realise myself how simple they would be to beat, and how easy it would be to beat. And sometimes, just out of fun, I try it just for curiosity. For example, if I’m going to mail a letter and I don’t have a stamp, you know, I can take that letter and address the person’s name in the left-hand corner I’m sending it to, and put my name in the middle of the envelope and the mail will return back to that person, and I’ve sent it without a stamp. I mean there are so many systems today that have so many loopholes in it, that you can do that. So I mean I still like to be creative and look at those loopholes, I just do it in an honest way and not go out and try to do anything that would be illegal.

Norman Swan: How long were you in jail?

Frank Abagnale: I spent a total of five years in jail, until I was 26 years old. And that’s when the Government made me an offer to take me out of prison.

Norman Swan: So you were transferred back, extradited to the United States, were you?

Frank Abagnale: Yes, I served time in the French prisons, and then I was extradited to Sweden, where I was convicted of forgery, and I served time in the Swedish prisons in Malmo, Sweden; and then after that I was extradited back to the United States where I was convicted of forgery and given a 12-year sentence, and sent to Federal Prison in the United States.

Norman Swan: Tell me then, how, if you’re telling me that with Internet technology and as technology advances it actually becomes easier and anonymity becomes easier for the forger or the con man or woman, how can you possibly train people to deal with it? Are there simple messages here, are there rules of thumb, or you’ve just got to get into the complexity of the technology and work out what people are doing?

Frank Abagnale: There’s two sides. There’s that side, where you have to go in and work with banks and companies that are doing wire transfers and electronic funds transfers, and show them how to try to secure the system as best as you can, and make it as difficult as you can. And on the other side, you have to alert consumers today, you have to be a very smart consumer. The police can’t protect you, the government can’t protect you, your bank can’t protect you, only you can protect yourself. So you have to ask yourself when you go on something like the Internet, what information am I putting out there, and how could someone use that information? The crime of the future will be identity theft, and we’re already starting to see where people assume other people’s identity because they’re able to get bits and pieces of information about that individual, their bank account, their social security or health card number, and then assume that person’s identity. And that’s an awful crime, because in that crime, the criminal who’s committing the crime is innocent until they’re proven guilty, but the person who’s the victim is guilty until they prove themselves innocent. So they’re the ones that have to go out and convince the bank, the credit bureau, that they’re not the person who made those charges or got that mortgage.

Norman Swan: So have you got some stories of those sort of things?

Frank Abagnale: Let’s just take for example, someone who goes to a grocery store and writes a cheque. Well when they write that cheque at the grocery store, first of all on that cheque is their name and address, the name of their bank and their account number at the bank. Then if the grocery store asks for identification and writes down a licence number on the back of the cheque or a credit card number, and maybe asks for a work number, then think how much information now is on there. So if I apply for a credit card, I simply put your name, when it asks the address, I put my address, how long? one month; what was my previous address, I put your address that’s on the cheque; where do you bank? I put your bank account number; where do you work? I call that number and they answer Qantas Airlines, I work at Qantas Airlines; and do you have any other credit cards? I turn it over and say ‘Yes I’ve got a Visa’. Think how many people handle that cheque, in the processing of that cheque from the time it was written at the grocery store.

Norman Swan: So you’re arguing for presumably increases in the level of privacy. Because what’s happening is because of information sharing in the credit world, particularly with ecommerce, that very little is private any more.

Frank Abagnale: Right. And absolutely I’m saying that. In the United States now for example, banks are asking for the customer’s fingerprint. You open a bank account and they want your fingerprint, and they want your fingerprint they say of course, to protect you, that if someone forges a cheque or comes in the bank, they can identify whether it was you or not with the fingerprint. But the bank already has all of the other information, your date of birth, social security number, all your pertinent information, and now they have your fingerprint. And then later on they tell you ‘Well if you’re going to use the ATM machine, we might want to do an eye iris, where we scan your eye.’ I mean when it does it all stop, when does it become a matter of you’re giving away way to much information.

Norman Swan: Why should ecommerce be any more dangerous than giving your credit card over the phone?

Frank Abagnale: It’s not. Ecommerce is just another form of payment, and it’s not any more dangerous than cash or credit card. Every form of payment has an inherited risk in it. And every system is not foolproof. Every system has a flaw. Sherlock Holmes said that best, ‘What one invents, one will discover.’ There is no question if a man or a woman creates it, another man or woman will defeat it. I just have a hard time when someone, a marketeer says to me that this electronic system is foolproof, that you can’t beat it, that it’s impossible. That’s a ridiculous statement to make. There is no foolproof system. Some man or some woman had to create it, so obviously some man or woman can defeat it. And if you start with that premise, then you can simply take the steps to try and make it as secure as you can.

Norman Swan: The incredible Frank Abagnale, Security Consultant

Now if you want to find out more about Frank, you’ll just have to wait till the Spielberg movie about him comes out at the end of the year, and apparently they’re re-releasing his autobiography, ‘Catch Me If You Can’, so that he can capitalise on the movie. So that will come out later in the year as well. 

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