85 Facts About Frank Abagnale

In 1980, Frank Abagnale co-wrote his autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, which built a narrative around these claimed victimless frauds.

The book inspired the film of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Frank Abagnale was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

The veracity of most of Frank Abagnale's claims have been questioned, and ongoing inquiries continue to confirm that they were made up.

In 2002, Frank Abagnale admitted on his website that some facts had been overdramatized or exaggerated, though he was not specific about what was exaggerated or omitted about his life.

Frank Abagnale spent his early life in Bronxville, New York.

Frank Abagnale's parents separated when he was 12 and divorced when he was 15 years old.

In numerous interviews, Frank Abagnale has claimed he attended an elite Catholic private school in Westchester, New York, Iona Preparatory School, through the 10th grade at age 16 in 1964.

Frank Abagnale is not mentioned by name, though, nor do any photographs of him appear in the Iona Preparatory School yearbooks from the time he ostensibly attended.

Frank Abagnale was discharged after less than three months, and was released on February 18,1965.

Less than two weeks after his release, Frank Abagnale was arrested for petty larceny in Mount Vernon on February 26,1965.

Frank Abagnale was arrested and booked on a vagrancy charge after being identified in a lineup by the victim.

Frank Abagnale was pictured in the local newspaper, seated in a car, being questioned by Special Agent Richard Miller of the FBI.

Frank Abagnale had financed his cross-country trip from New York to California with blank checks stolen from a family business located on the Bronx River Parkway.

Frank Abagnale was charged with impersonating a US customs official, although this charge was dropped.

Frank Abagnale obtained a uniform at a Manhattan uniform company, purchased with the money he obtained from the forgery of checks and on July 7,1965, informed local media that he was a graduate of the American Airlines pilot school in Fort Worth, Texas, but he was arrested for theft of checks in Tuckahoe, New York days later.

Frank Abagnale was sentenced to three years at the Great Meadow Prison in Comstock, New York for these stolen checks.

In Baton Rouge, Frank Abagnale befriended a local minister, claimed he had a master's degree in social work from Ithaca College, and sought work with vulnerable youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The reverend, after Frank Abagnale told him he was a furloughed TWA pilot, became suspicious and called the airline, which informed him that Frank Abagnale was a fraud.

The reverend notified the Baton Rouge Police Department, and Frank Abagnale was arrested on February 14,1969, initially on vagrancy charges.

Two weeks after the Louisiana bench warrant was issued, Frank Abagnale was arrested in Montpellier, France, in September 1969.

Frank Abagnale had stolen an automobile and defrauded two local families in Klippan, Sweden.

Frank Abagnale was sentenced to four months for theft in France, though he served only three months in Perpignan's prison.

Frank Abagnale was then extradited to Sweden, where he was convicted of gross fraud by forgery.

Frank Abagnale served two months in a Malmo prison, was banned from Sweden for eight years, and was required to compensate his Swedish victims.

Frank Abagnale was deported back to the United States in June 1970, when his appeal failed.

Frank Abagnale was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia, three months later, on November 2,1970, after cashing 10 fake Pan Am payroll checks in different towns.

Frank Abagnale escaped from the Cobb County jail and was picked up 4 days later in New York City.

Frank Abagnale was sentenced to 10 years in 1971 for forging checks that totaled $1,448.60, and he received an additional two years for escaping from the local Cobb County jailhouse.

In 1974, Frank Abagnale was released on parole after he had served around two years of his 12-year sentence at Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg, Virginia.

Unwilling to return to his family in New York, Frank Abagnale says he left the choice of parole location up to the court, which decided that he would be paroled in Houston, Texas.

Frank Abagnale again posed as a pilot in 1974 to obtain a job at Camp Manison, a summer children's camp in Texas, where he was arrested for stealing cameras from his co-workers.

Frank Abagnale explained to the bank what he had done and offered to speak to the bank's staff and show them various tricks that "paperhangers" use to defraud banks.

Frank Abagnale's offer included the condition that if they did not find his speech helpful, they would owe him nothing; otherwise, they would owe him only $50, with an agreement that they would provide his name to other banks.

In 1977, Frank Abagnale gave public talks wherein he claimed that between the ages of 16 and 21, he was a doctor in a Georgia hospital for one year, an assistant state attorney general for one year, a sociology professor for two semesters, and a Pan American airlines pilot for two years.

Frank Abagnale claimed he eluded the FBI with a daring escape from a commercial airline toilet bowl, while the plane was taxiing at the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York.

In 1978, Frank Abagnale told a Honolulu Advertiser reporter that he was familiar with the toilet apparatus, squeezed himself through the opening, swung down through the lower hatch, landed on the pavement, ran across the runway, and hailed a cab.

Frank Abagnale moved with his wife, Kelly, and their three sons to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Frank Abagnale has appeared in the media a variety of times, including three times as guest on The Tonight Show, an appearance on To Tell the Truth in 1977, and a regular slot on the British network TV series The Secret Cabaret in the 1990s.

The real Frank Abagnale made a cameo appearance in this film as a French police officer taking DiCaprio into custody.

In public lectures describing his life story, Frank Abagnale has consistently maintained that he was "arrested just once," and that was in Montpellier, France.

However, public records show Frank Abagnale was arrested in New York, California, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas.

Individuals criminally targeted by Frank Abagnale have described the long-term consequences of victimization:.

Frank Abagnale had a key to our front door, it was never recovered.

In 1978, the Louisiana State Bar Association reconciled all those who took the bar exam and concluded that Frank Abagnale never took the exam using his own name or that of an alias; the State Attorney General's Office examined payments to all employees during the time Frank Abagnale claimed he worked there and concluded that he never worked in the office using his name or an alias.

Frank Abagnale claimed that when he was 18 years old, he worked for a year as a supervising pediatrician at the Cobb General Hospital in Marietta, Georgia.

Frank Abagnale maintained that he worked the midnight-to-8 am shift, supervising seven residents and 42 nurses.

University of Arizona officials acknowledge that Frank Abagnale had interacted with 12 female students.

One of Frank Abagnale's most notable claims was an alleged escape from the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, in 1971:.

In 1978, after Frank Abagnale had been a featured speaker at an anticrime seminar, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter looked into his assertions.

Telephone calls to banks, schools, hospitals, and other institutions Frank Abagnale mentioned turned up no evidence of his cons under the aliases he used.

In December 1978, Frank Abagnale's claims were again investigated after he visited Oklahoma City for a talk.

Frank Abagnale always reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my biography.

Frank Abagnale made these claims in print media, namely the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, three years before the publication of his co-written autobiography, effectively nullifying the claim his aforementioned co-author, Stan Redding, exaggerated the story.

In True Detective, Frank Abagnale claimed to Redding that he passed the Louisiana bar exam, worked as an assistant attorney general, was employed as a sociology professor, worked as an Atlanta pediatrician, escaped from an airplane toilet, escaped from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, recruited University of Arizona students, and cashed $2.5 million in checks.

Frank Abagnale claimed that he could not recall the details, and that his co-author Redding had exaggerated some things.

Frank Abagnale conceded to Haws that he might have been a guest lecturer.

Logan's investigation uncovered numerous petty crimes that Frank Abagnale has never acknowledged.

Various media outlets have asked Frank Abagnale to respond to Logan's book content, which included victim statements and citations to publicly accessible records.

Frank Abagnale has responded by stating that the book is "not worthy of a comment".

Frank Abagnale has told the press, "I was convicted on $2.5 million dollars' worth of bad checks" and that he later hired a law firm to get all the money back to hotels and other companies.

In many interviews and speeches, Frank Abagnale has claimed that he has earned millions of dollars from his patents.

Leiva confirmed that Frank Abagnale was in prison between 17 and 20 and then convicted for theft in Baton Rouge in June 1969.

Leiva obtained the federal records connected to Frank Abagnale's Pan Am checks and confirmed that his conviction, at 22 years old, was based on less than $1,500.

Leiva says he calculated that between 1965 and 1970, Frank Abagnale was only free for a matter of months and that his records show he was in prison most of that time.

In 1977, when Frank Abagnale began claiming a five-year uninterrupted life on the run, involving multiprofession imposter scams, he did not claim to work for the FBI.

Frank Abagnale did leverage the names of FBI personnel to bolster his new biographical claims.

That damn Frank Abagnale uses my name all over the place, but I've never even met the guy.

Perry interviewed Eugene Stewart, a retired FBI agent who was in charge of the Atlanta division when Frank Abagnale claimed he was a pediatrician in suburban Atlanta.

Stewart, who at this point was Delta Air Lines chief of security, informed Perry that Frank Abagnale was a low-level criminal: "It's more of a harassment than anything else," said Stewart.

Public records show that almost two years after his parole, in October 1975, Frank Abagnale was hired by Aetna Insurance, and was abruptly fired by the company after he allegedly cashed bad personal checks during his employee training.

Frank Abagnale carried this claim into the '90s: "I was the only teenager in the history of the FBI to be put on their 10 Most Wanted list," Abagnale told his audiences in 1994.

Frank Abagnale was, according to United States Board of Parole and Federal Bureau of Prisons standard practice at the time, sent to a pre-release center in Houston in 1973, within the 120 days prior to his actual federal parole date of February 8,1974.

Journalist Ira Perry was unable to find any evidence that Frank Abagnale worked with the FBI; according to one retired FBI special agent in charge, Frank Abagnale was caught trying to pass personal checks in 1978 several years after he claimed that he began working with the FBI.

Frank Abagnale claimed that Shea befriended and supervised him during his parole.

Frank Abagnale spotted Shea at an anticrime seminar in Kansas City and sought out Shea to shake his hand.

Frank Abagnale has claimed in public lectures that he was discussed in detail in a coffee-table book celebrating 100 years of the FBI.

In 2020, Frank Abagnale was confronted by one of his victims in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

On September 12,2022, Frank Abagnale was awarded the "Heroes in Ethics" award by Xavier University, located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Frank Abagnale gave the keynote lecture at the university's annual Heroes of Professional Ethics series.

Frank Abagnale claimed he had nothing to do with his autobiography, the film, and the Broadway musical.

The incident at Xavier University was not the first time Frank Abagnale's story caused controversy on a university campus.

Frank Abagnale refused to sign the affidavit, referring to the document as a "slap in the face".

Furthermore, in the letter to GSSU, Frank Abagnale stated that he was cancelling all college speaking engagements because the criminal aspects of the life story he was presenting "[are] not something to which young impressionable minds should be exposed".

Frank Abagnale maintains that meeting his wife was the motivation for changing his life.

Frank Abagnale told author Paul Stenning that he met her while allegedly working undercover for the FBI when she was a cashier at a grocery store.