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Frank Abagnale Jr.American expert in the field of document security, best known for his daring crimes committed back in the 1960s.
Date of Birth: 27.04.1948
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Frank Abagnale Jr.
Frank Abagnale Jr. is an American expert in the field of document security, best known for his daring crimes committed in the 1960s. After being extradited to the United States, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison but served only a portion of his sentence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recruited him to collaborate in identifying counterfeit documents and their manufacturers. Abagnale currently lectures at the FBI Academy and provides consultations to major corporations and government institutions. His extraordinary life story served as the basis for his autobiography, "Catch Me If You Can," which was adapted into a film by director Steven Spielberg.
Early Life
Frank Abagnale Jr. was the third child of businessman Frank Abagnale Sr. and his French wife Paula Abagnale. He inherited many qualities and skills from his father, who had a keen interest in politics and worked with individuals of various social statuses. When Frank was 14 years old, his parents divorced, and he was placed under his father's custody by court order. However, according to Frank, his father did not particularly desire this arrangement. The divorce greatly traumatized the young Frank, and he made unsuccessful attempts to reconcile his family until his father's death in 1974.
Early Crimes
Frank's father became the first victim of his fraudulent activities. As Frank developed an interest in the opposite sex, he began spending more money on socializing with girls. He took money from his father's credit card, which he obtained under the pretext of needing to refuel the car his father had given him as a gift. Frank had an arrangement with gas station employees: when purchasing fuel and spare parts, he asked them to charge a higher amount on the card and shared the difference with them. The final bill on the card amounted to $3,400, which Frank Sr. only discovered after personally meeting with a debt collector. It turned out that Frank had been destroying incoming payment slips.
Soon, Frank fully embraced an adventurous lifestyle and began committing more serious acts of fraud. His first crime involved forging checks on his own account, with the check amount exceeding his account balance. He implemented this scheme with numerous banks. One of his most commonly used techniques was dropping a counterfeit deposit slip into the bank's database. This resulted in the transfer of money from real customers' accounts to Frank's fake account. He managed to embezzle over $40,000 before the banks discovered the source of the leaks. By the time he was declared a fugitive, Frank had withdrawn the funds from his accounts and changed his identity.
Airline and Teaching Schemes
Frank Abagnale often posed as an airline pilot, which provided several advantages. Between the ages of 16 and 18, while "working" for one of the largest American airlines, Pan American, he accumulated over 1,000,000 miles through more than 250 flights to 26 countries around the world, all at the expense of the company. As an airline employee, he could also enjoy free hotel services, which further burdened Pan American. While he successfully avoided taking actual control of an aircraft as a pilot, claiming that it was against regulations to fly with alcohol in his system, he used his position to his advantage.
According to Frank's own claims, he taught sociology at Brigham Young University for one semester by forging a diploma from Columbia University. While working as a teacher, he went by the name Frank Adams. For about a year, Abagnale managed to pass himself off as the chief pediatrician at a hospital in Georgia, using the alias Frank Conners. He sought refuge in Georgia to evade police pursuit, which almost caught up with him during one of his flights. When he started renting an apartment, he listed his profession as a doctor to avoid arousing suspicion, as the apartment owner could have verified his record with Pan American. He then befriended one of his neighbors, a real doctor, and secured a position at the clinic.
