Frank Abagnale Jr, the Bad and the Good
At the age of 14 he left home, between the ages of 16 and 21, acting as an imposter he had encashed almost $2.5 million by throwing fraudulent checks in banks all over United States and 25 other countries. At 21 he was in prison for offences involving financial crime and impersonations. At 26 he was working with the FBI, advising the authorities on crimes committed by fraud. This is the story of a devil turned angel Frank Abagnale Jr, a con artist, once known as the world’s most famous confidence man.
Frank Jr. was born in Bronxville, New York to Frank Abagnale Sr. and French mother Paulette. The couple divorced when Jr. was 14. That’s when he left home, a journey he started that would eventually end up peculiarly.
Upon leaving home with an urge to earn money, Abagnale started conning as a means of earning a living. His initial cons were simple check frauds like opening bank accounts using false names, writing out checks for it after they were overdrawn and disappear before he could be caught. He later improved his methods to con money out of banks such as printing out fake but almost perfect copies of checks, depositing them, and persuading banks to advance him cash on the basis of his account balances. Another trick he used was to print his account number on blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank slips, pulling all the deposits written on those slips into his own account.
Frank then realized that he could cash more bad checks if he dazzled bank tellers with a new and more impressive personality. So he started impersonation, as a new means of conning. He first imitated as a pilot for Pan American World Airways forging an FAA pilot’s license. Pan Am estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles on over 250 flights and flew to 26 countries for free, enjoying all the perquisites at the airline company’s expenses. At times he was even invited by pilots to take control of the plane in-flight.
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Frank Jr. was born in Bronxville, New York to Frank Abagnale Sr. and French mother Paulette. The couple divorced when Jr. was 14. That’s when he left home, a journey he started that would eventually end up peculiarly.
Upon leaving home with an urge to earn money, Abagnale started conning as a means of earning a living. His initial cons were simple check frauds like opening bank accounts using false names, writing out checks for it after they were overdrawn and disappear before he could be caught. He later improved his methods to con money out of banks such as printing out fake but almost perfect copies of checks, depositing them, and persuading banks to advance him cash on the basis of his account balances. Another trick he used was to print his account number on blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank slips, pulling all the deposits written on those slips into his own account.
Frank then realized that he could cash more bad checks if he dazzled bank tellers with a new and more impressive personality. So he started impersonation, as a new means of conning. He first imitated as a pilot for Pan American World Airways forging an FAA pilot’s license. Pan Am estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles on over 250 flights and flew to 26 countries for free, enjoying all the perquisites at the airline company’s expenses. At times he was even invited by pilots to take control of the plane in-flight.
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