Catch Me If You Can: Frank Abagnale's Story

and normally at this time I go ahead and give you a little brief history and tell you something about our speaker but our speaker has such an interesting life story that I don't want to take anything from him so and we'd rather hear from him directly and so please join me in welcoming Frank W Abagnale thank you it's my pleasure to be here today most of the time when I go to the podium to speak it is always about fraud and embezzlement and cybercrime and identity theft and I'll be doing that later on this afternoon but today I've been asked to talk a little bit about my life in which the film catch me if you can was made I've had a book written about my life by a writer I've had a film made my about my life by a great film director I've had a television series created about my life called white collar by a television creator and I've had a Broadway play for those of you saw the New York Times last week opening on April 10th catch me if you can is a Broadway musical all of those people obviously writing as creative people about my life some of them having never met me so I can only assume that they are telling a story from their point of view so today I thought I would just tell you the story from my point of view I was raised just north of New York City in Westchester County New York and a little town they're called Bronxville I was actually one of four children in the family I was educated there by the Christian Brothers of Ireland at a private Catholic school called Iona in nourish shell New York where I went to school from kindergarten to high school by the time I had reached the age of 16 in the tenth grade my parents after 22 years of marriage one day decided to get a divorce unlike most divorces where the children were usually the first to know my parents were very good about keeping that a secret I remember being in the tenth grade when the father walked in the classroom and asked her brother to excuse me from class when I came out in the hallway the father handed me my books and told me that one of the brothers would drive me to the county seat in White Plains New York where I would meet my parents and they would explain what was going on I remember the brother dropped me at the steps of the big stone building and told me to go on two steps and that my parents would be waiting for me in the lobby I remember climbing the steps seeing a sign on the building that said family court but really didn't understand what that man when I arrived in the lobby my parents were not there but I was ushered into the back of an immense courtroom where my parents were standing before a judge I couldn't hear what the judge was saying nor my parents response but eventually the judge saw me at the back of the room and he motioned me to approach the bench I walked up to stand in between my parents I distinctly remember that the judge never looked at me never acknowledged I was standing there he just read from his papers and said that my parents were getting a divorce and because I was 16 years of age I would need to tell the court which parent I chose to live with I started to cry so I turned and ran out of the courtroom the judge called for a 10-minute recess but by the time my parents got outside I was gone my mother never saw me again for about seven years until I was a young adult contrary to the movie my father never saw me nor ever spoke to me again in the mid-1960s running away was a very popular thing for young people a lot of them got caught up in haight-ashbury the hippie scene the drug scene instead I took a few belongings packed them in a bag boarded what was then the New Haven and Hartford railroad for the short train ride down to Grand Central Terminal in New York my father did own a stationary store but actually in Manhattan located on the corner of 40th and Madison and still there today like all of us we had to work in the store so I made deliveries for my dad I knew the city very well so naturally I started looking for the same type of work there were a lot of signs on the window stock board delivery boy I'd walk in and apply so tell me young man how old are you 16 how far you go in high school tenth grade I'll are you and I went to work for a small amount of money a few hours a day but I soon realized I couldn't support myself on that amount of money I also realized that as long as people believed I was 16 years old they weren't going to pay me any more money at 16 I was six foot tall I've always had a little gray hair my friends in school said that once a week when we dressed from Mass I look more like a teacher then it's so I decided to lie about my age in New York we had a driver's license of 16 back then they didn't have a photo on it just an IBM card so I altered one digit of my date of birth I was actually born in April of 1948 but I dropped that four converted at two or three and that made me ten years older or 26 years old I walked around applying for the same type of work people gave me a little more money a few more hours but even then it was difficult to make ends meet one of the few things I had taken when I left home was a checkbook my father had opened a checking account for me at a small community bank in Mount Vernon New York I had a little money in the account so every so often I would write a check to supplement my income $10 $15 funds were there checks were good but it was my friends my peers who would constantly say to me you know you're the only guy know that walks into a bank in the middle of Manhattan you have no account there you don't know a soul you talk to somebody behind the desk and they okay your check oh well my checks are good if I walked in that Bank they wouldn't touch my check you walk in they don't bat an eye years later reporters were right and speculate that that was my upbringing mannerisms dress appearance speech whatever it was was very easy to do so consequently when the money ran out I kept writing those checks of course the check started to bounce police were looking for me as a runaway so I thought maybe is a good time to start thinking about leaving New York City but I was quite apprehensive about going to Chicago Miami wondered if they cash in New York check on in New York driver's license in Miami as quickly as they did in Manhattan I was walking up 42nd Street when afternoon about five o'clock in the evening 16 years old pondering all of these things when I started to pass the front door of an old hotel that used to be there called the Commodore hotel now the Grand Hyatt just as I was about to get to the front door of the hotel out stepped in Eastern airline flight crew onto the sidewalk couldn't help but notice a captain the copilot the flight engineer about three or four flight attendants dragging their bags to the curb to load them in the van to take them to the airport as they loaded the van I thought to myself that's it I could pose as a pilot I could travel over the world for free I probably could get just about anybody anywhere to cash a check for me so I walked up the street little further to 42nd and Park I went to cross over but I heard a huge helicopter I looked up and there was New York Airways landing on the roof of the Pan Am building Pan Am the nation's flag carrier airline that flew around the world I thought what a perfect airline to use so the next day I placed a phone call to the executive corporate offices of Pan Am when the switchboard was ringing I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say when they answered Pan American Airlines can I help you yes ma'am I'd like to speak to somebody in the somebody in the purchasing department purchasing one moment 'no clerk came on i say yes sir maybe not me my name is john black i'm a co-pilot with the company based out of San Francisco been with the company about seven years never had anything like this come up before oh it's problem well we flew a trip in here yesterday we're going out today yesterday I sent my uniform out through the hotel to have a dry clean now the hotel and the cleaner say they can't find it here I am with the flight in about four hours new uniform don't you have a spare uniform certainly back home in San Francisco but I never get it here in time for my flight do you understand that this would cost you the price of a uniform not the company I understand hold on I'll be right back he came back and said my supervisor says you need to go down to the well-built Uniform Company on Fifth Avenue there our supplier I'll call them and let them know you're on the way well that's exactly what I wanted to know so I went down to the well-built Uniform Company little fella mr. Rosen fitted me out in the uniform back then they were black gabardine two three gold stripes on the arm the gray hair I certainly looked old enough to be the pilot when it was all done is that how much dough you wear the uniforms 286 dollars no problem I write you a check no we can't take any checks oh well then all um I'll just pay you cash oh no we can't accept cash you need to fill out this computer card then in these boxes put your employee number we build this back under uniform allowance comes out of your next Pan Am paycheck that's even better go ahead and do that New York had two airports LaGuardia in Kennedy LaGuardia was 20 minutes from Manhattan Kennedy was 50 so naturally LaGuardia being the closer of the two that's where I win spent most of the morning walking around LaGuardia in the uniform trying to figure out now that I had the uniform how the hell do you get on these planes well I got a little hungry about lunchtime so I walked in the luncheonette sat down at the counter on the stool in order to sandwich moments later at TWA crew walked in flight attendants at in the booth but the pilot set up at the counter on either side of me the captain right next to me now back before deregulation of the airlines airline people thought of themselves as just one big family they didn't hesitate a moment to talk to each other the captain kind of leaned over a young man I was Pan Am doing doing just fine captain tell me what's up I am doing out here at LaGuardia Pan Am doesn't fly into LaGuardia they only go into Kennedy well I picked up on that right away yeah we came into Kennedy at a short layover and I came over to visit some friends of my matter of fact I'm on my way back to Kennedy now so tell me a man what type of equipment are you on now airline people have a lot of jargon for things that one of them is they never call a plane a plane or an aircraft they call it equipment and what type of equipment you're on men what type of plane do you fly back then a dc-8 a 707 of course I didn't know that and I thought what type of equipment in my arm only equipment amount as a stool they must mean what type of equipment is on the planes I fly so tell where they've got the wing they got the engine it always had a sticker on the engine who manufactured the engine so I said yes General Electric all three pilots kind of just stopped eating and leaned over cabins said oh really what do you fly washing machine so I knew I said the wrong thing out the door I went everybody had an airline ID card plastic laminated card much like a driver's license without the ID card the uniform was worthless went back to Manhattan pretty discouraged thinking where would I come up with a pan-american airline corporate ID I was sitting in a hotel room I noticed a big thick Manhattan yellow pages on the dresser I pulled them down on the bed flipped him open and looked under the word identification there were three or four pages of companies who made convention badges metal badges plastic badges police badges fire badges started to call around and finally one company said listen most of those airline IDs manufactured by Polaroid 3m company need to call one of them finally got the 3m company on the phone in Manhattan yeah we manufacture Pan Am's identification system along with the number of other carriers how come so today I'm a purchasing officer for a major US carrier I'm in New York just for the day getting ready to expand our routes hire a lot of new employees go to a formal ID we're very impressed with the Pan Am format one that if I came by your office this afternoon briefly we could discuss quantity and price by all means come on by so I went by dressed in a suit and the sales are up open the book yeah we do United Delta Eastern Pan Am Pan Am we like that format or wonder if you might have a sample I could bring back sure I'll be right back and he brought me back a 5x7 glossy piece of paper with a picture of an ID card blown up in the middle of it someone else's picture in the picture John Doe for a name and in bold red ink across the front this is a sample only I said no I'm afraid this won't do and by the way I need to bring back an actual plastic card what is all this equipment on the floor we don't sell just these cards we sell the system camera laminator as you have to buy all this absolutely well tell you what since we have to buy it all why don't you just demonstrate our works and use me fine ever see right here took my picture made up the card and out the door I win I was going down the elevator studying the card had a blue border across the top about a quarter of an inch in Pan Am's color blue but not a single thing on the card said Pan Am no logo no insignia no name this was a plastic card like a credit card couldn't type on it couldn't write on it couldn't print on it discouraged I put it in my pocket headed back to the hotel as I was walking back I noticed I had passed a hobby shop so I turned around and walked back excuse me sir see it sell a lot of models here you sell models of commercial jetliners sure over there and I bought a model of a Pan Am 707 cargo jet for about two dollars and forty cents took it back to my room opened the box through all the parts out but there at the bottom of the box was a sheet of decals that went on the bottle and when you soaked him the glass of water the little Pan Am logo that would have went on the tail of the plastic plane went perfect up at the top of the plastic card and the word Pan Am and the special styling of graphics it would have went on the fuselage went perfect across the top of the card and the clear decal on the laminated plastic made a beautiful identification card Pan Am says they estimate that between the ages of 16 and 18 I flew more than a million miles for free board in more than 250 commercial aircraft in more than 26 countries Pan Am says keep in mind that though Frank Abagnale did in fact pose as one of our pilots he never once stepped on board one of our aircraft that's true I never flew on Pan Am excuse me because I was afraid someone might say to me you know I'm based in San Francisco I've been out there for 22 years I don't recall ever meeting you before or someone might say you know your ID card is not exactly like my ID card so instead I flew on everyone else if I wanted to go somewhere I literally just walked out to the airport and looked on the board United flight 800 to Chicago then I went downstairs to the door marked United operations and walked in the operations clerk a Pan Am what can we do for you I was wondering - jump seats open on 800 I need to deadhead to Chicago jump see it's open this evening like to get a pink slip pass now give my ID he write me out of pass sidewalk out hand it to the flight attendant she'd opened the door to the cockpit and I'd step in they had a captain a co-pilot a flight engineer and a seat behind the captain called the jump seat where pilots did hit on company time now because pilots love to talk shop once you picked up that jargon it was the same conversation over and over and over so I just step on board even Jim Bob Davis bureau in Chicago on the taxi out always the same question so Bob how long you been with Pan Am been flying about seven years what position you fly a right seat which is airline terminology for a co-pilot what type of equipment are you on add that one down pervert matter of fact whatever they flew I didn't fly so I no problems with that then we'd arrive in Chicago I'd go by the Pan Am ticket counter but just enough to get the attention of the passenger service rep it's a good help you excuse me where do we lay over here that did hit a trip for somebody got it never laid over in Chicago so we as a farmhouse Hilton downtown catch a crew bus low level door three out I'd go down the Parma House Hilton walk in and on the corner of the registration desk was a little sign said airline cruise that was a three-ring binder you signed in referenced your flight number showed your ID they give me a key I'd stayed two or three days and Pan Am would be direct bill from our room and my meal I also could cash a personal check at the front desk of the hotel up to a hundred dollars because I was an employee of the airline the airline had a contract with the hotel and they'd cash your check but then I found out that every airline honors every other airline employees personal check or reciprocal agreements still practiced today in 2010 so a delta flight attendant at the West Palm Beach Airport can walk over and to the the American ticket counter show her ID and cash a check up to $100 and vice versa of course when I found that out I'd go out to JFK or LAX only I'd go to everybody North East National KLM Air France would take me a good eight hours stopping at every building at every counter by the time I got all the way around the other end of the airport at least eight hours have gone by what do you have in eight hours shift change new people so I go all the way back around the other way I made a great deal of money the only reason I quit at eighteen is the FBI you should a John Doe warned for interstate transportation of fraudulent checks a federal offense the John Doe warrant meant the FBI didn't know my identity in the warrant the FBI said based on interviews with people I had contact with I was approximately thirty years old I was 18 had a great deal of money so I hung a uniform up and moved to Atlanta Georgia and Atlanta I moved into a very Swank singles complex that had just been built there called the River Bend apartments on the application for the lease there are a lot of questions for a teenage boy one of them was occupation I began to write down airline pilot but the next question said employed by supervisors named telephone contact I thought to myself I'll need to come up with something that would be in possible to check out yet something that would justify why driving an expensive car were expensive clothes don't work much so I wrote down the word doctor first thing came to my mind had it very had a very inquisitive apartment manager said oh I see here you're a doctor yes ma'am what type of doctor are you well I'm a I'm a medical doctor however I'm not practicing medicine right now I left my practice out in Los Angeles to come to Atlanta to invest in some real estate I have so I won't be practicing for a while how interesting will tell me what type of medical doctor are you and I figured being a singles complex pediatrician would be pretty safe I moved in dr. Frank Williams pediatrician everybody called me doc always the typical questions at the pool so doc why'd you go to medical school at Columbia University in New York would you serve your internship where Harvard Children's Hospital in Los Angeles once in a while one of the guys would come by hey Paul they don't look at my leg I don't know what I did to it look at this Paul I can't examine your leg need to go to your own doctor him look at that when the girls came by I always gave them a thorough examination sent him anyway I was young but not stupid I was living there for about two or three months everything was going great one afternoon there was a knock on the door very distinguished gentleman mid-50s standing there it's a good help you you're dr. Williams yes my name is Gordon just moved in the apartment down below one to come up introduce myself a new neighbor come on in I'm not only a new neighbor understand that you're a pediatrician yes I'm the chief resident pediatrician of the County Hospital up the street dr. Gordon was going through a divorce just separated from his wife he was very upset very lonely everyday on the way the car out to the pool he'd stopped me after a minute or two about the weather he'd start speaking medical terminology not being able to converse with him I in turn would cut him short but I knew eventually he'd get suspicious determined not to move every day I went to Emory University's medical library every day I read the daily journals from Johns Hopkins from the Mayo Clinic every dad took a certain part of the journal memorized it and every night when dr. Gordon pulled in his parking slot literally without exaggeration every night I was sitting on his doorstep taught me about this new theater using a permit what is it tonight aggravated he'd go into his apartment I'd go in behind him he'd go in his bedroom to get undressed I'd go in his bedroom sit on the edge of the bed in the kitchen I'd follow him back and forth go the bathroom I talked to the door pretty soon he'd come home a doc I have time to talk to her now I gotta go guys start to avoid one afternoon I received a phone call from the hospital administrator who was not a physician but the administrator of the hospital dr. Gordon who suggested I give you a call said you'd be more than happy to help us out what's the problem Vaughn the mid-nineteen shift to have a doctor supervise a number of interns nurses on a shift has been notified of a death and his family's returning to the West Coast tomorrow for about at two weeks when Georgia law requires the house doctor on duty be a full practitioner dr. Gordon suggested a great deal of free time you'd be more than happy to cover the shift just in an administrative capacity there's no way I could do that why not well I'm not licensed to practice medicine in the state of Georgia just the state of California I hold my residency all the red tape for two weeks oh no red tape we're bringing before the medical view board tomorrow morning to issue a temporary certificate you can start tomorrow night now being one who hates to pass up a challenge I couldn't help but give it a shot so I went up to the hospital during my entire stay there no one ever doubted for a second I was not a doctor when the doctor came back I was relieved and left the hospital no one the wiser I did pass the bar in the state of Louisiana not in two weeks as a movie implies but in two months by taking the prep course for the bar actually at the time Louisiana did not require a law degree to take the bar Louisiana practice their law under the French Napoleonic criminal code of procedure I took the bar passed the bar went to work for Attorney General PF grimian in the Civil Division of a state court where I spent about a year no one the wiser on my own I resigned and left a lot of people say you know it's not so much the people you impersonated as a teenage boy as it is the crimes you perpetrated as a teenage boy well I did a lot of things that had just never been done before so they got a lot of attention I was walking down a Chicago street one day counting five $20 bills in my pocket as I was counting them I noticed I had passed the front door of a bank on the window there was a sign that said hope a checking account so I thought to myself I'll go in this Bank open the checking account with this hundred dollars I'll give him this phony Pan Am ID for identification in two weeks this Bank will mail me two hundred printed cheques in a box with this ID and with this name I'll cash them anywhere so I walked in open the account new accounts person came back so here's a receipt for your deposit these are some temporary checks will be mailing you your printed checks and about ten days now being young I was always inquisitive so I noticed that you didn't give me any deposit slips no sir they come from the cheque printer be in the back of the checkbook printer your name your account number you get them in about 10 days I see and and if I wish to make a deposit tomorrow or next week not a problem you see the table in the lobby has all the forms on it just help yourself to a blank deposit slip in this box just insert your account number I just gave you use those do you get your printed ones so I walked over and took a big stack of them off the shell nobody cared went back to my hotel couldn't sleep I kept staring at them on the dresser so when the morning came I went out and bought what was called the Burroughs 1000 magnetic encoder looked like a big green calculating machine and I magnetically encoded my account number the bank had assigned to me the day before on the bottom of every one of these blanks I then went back to the bank put him on the Shelf in the lobby and everyone who came in put their check in my account I was at the Logan Airport in Boston I was trying to catch a flight it was a quarter to 12:00 at night I ran out to the airport the whole airport was closing down rented cars gift shops ticket counters I walked up to the ticket counter excuse me you're closing the airport actually the airport lies in the heart of the city comes under the government's noise abatement control program we have no jet operations after midnight next flight out as at 6:30 in the morning I sat down wondering what to do I noticed they were all sticking their cash and receipts in these big Bank bags then they'd zip them clothes locked them put them under their arm walk around the counter and down the hall to the bank that was in the terminal they'd stick their key in the night box open it drop the bag down the chute make sure it went all the way down closed it locked it one right after the other Hertz Avis Delta Eastern Dobbs house dropping the bag I didn't give this a lot of thought but I came back to the airport the next night about a quarter to twelve I have rented a bank guards uniform from a costume store in Boston hung a beautiful sign over the night box said night box out of order please leave all deposits with guard on duty everyone did I was a nervous one sitting there gone how the hell can a box be adored I mean that's like a mail box without orders now of course like any criminal sooner or later you get caught and I was no exception to that rule arrested just once in my life at the age of 21 by the French police in a small town in southern France calm on PA French police actually arresting me on an Interpol warrant issued by the Swedish police who were looking for me for forgery and believed I was living in southern France when taken into custody by the French authorities on the swedish warrant they soon realized I'd forged checks all over France and they refused to honor the warrant and the request for extradition they later convicted me of forgery in France and sent me to French prison I served my time in a place called the maison de res the house of arrest in a small town in southern france copa pinyon Steven Spielberg told Barbara Walters it was extremely important to me to go back to that prison to the exact cell Frank was in and reconstructed according to the logbooks during his stay there but she said was a blanket on the floor a hole in the floor to go to the bathroom no plumbing no electricity he said according to the log books I entered the prison at 198 pounds and left the prison at 109 pounds when my sentence was over I was immediately extradited to Sweden where I was later convicted in a Swedish court of law and sent to a Swedish Penitentiary in Malmo Sweden when my term was up in Sweden US federal authorities returned me to the United States arraigned in US federal court a United States federal judge sentenced me to twelve years in federal prison I served four of those twelve years at a federal prison in Petersburg Virginia when I was 26 years old the government offered to take me out of prison on the condition I go to work for an agency of the federal government for the remainder of my sentence or until my parole had been satisfactorily completed I agreed and was released in February of 2010 I celebrated 35 years at the FBI where I work today in Washington DC and have worked for 35 years I make my home in Charleston South Carolina where I live with my wife of 34 years and my three sons I commute each week up to Washington to my office my youngest boy is 27 years old he graduated from the University of Beijing in China went on to get his master's at the University of Beijing he reads writes and speaks Chinese fluently he works for an American program sponsored by Princeton University called the China education initiative and where they bring American school teachers over to China to teach in rural schools he administers a program in China he's just twenty-seven my next son is 29 he graduated from University in Nevada and Las Vegas his degree was in business my wife owns a company in Charleston South Carolina he manages that business for her and my oldest boy who's 31 graduated from University of Kansas he went on to Loyola School of Law in Chicago got his law degree passed the bar in Illinois went on to make his dad very very proud he's an FBI agent in our counterintelligence unit in Baltimore Maryland as many of you know I had very little to do with the movie I made no money from the movie nor would the television show nor the Broadway play due to government regulations concerning those concepts so consequently as Steven Spielberg did a lot of his own research and had very little to do with the making of the movie he did have the three FBI agents who were retired at the time on the set with him during the making of the film but had very little input from me to the FBI's regulations about doing so but in the end my family and I felt very blessed we felt that he went out of his way not to glorify the things I did but to simply tell the story about what I did one month prior to the release of the film in November of 2002 in an interview with Barbara Walters Steven Spielberg said I did not immortalize Frank Abagnale on film because of what he did 40 years ago as a teenage boy I actually chose to immortalize them on film because of what he's done for his country for more than 30 years in the end my family and I were very pleased with the result of the film now needless to say because of the film showing up on TV and the huge Broadway play that is happening in brought on Broadway on April 10 there's a lot of publicity so I get hundreds of emails back in Washington DC it's interesting to note that the emails I get come from all over the world and they come from people as young as 8 - people as old as 80 the emails of course of people just making a statement for having watched the film or seen it for the first time they're not looking for a response or expecting one they just want to make a statement some write and say you were brilliant you were an absolute genius I was neither I was just a child had a been brilliant had a been a genius I don't know that I would have found it necessary to break the law in order to just simply survive and while I know that there are people fascinated by what I did 40 years ago as a teenager I've always looked upon what I did is immoral illegal unethical and a burden I live with every single day of my life and will till my death there are many who write and say you know you were certainly gifted that I was I was one of those few children that got to grow up with a daddy the world is full of fathers but there are very few men worthy of being called daddy by their child I had a daddy who loved his children more than he loved life itself Steven Spielberg would later write that the more I research Frank's youth without the use of Frank I couldn't help but put his father in the film through the likes of Christopher Walken my father was a man who had four children three boys and a daughter every night at bedtime he'd walk into your room he was 6 3 he would drop down on one knee kiss you on the cheek pull the cover up and he put his lip up on your earlobe and he'd whisper in your ear I love you I love you very much he never missed a night sometimes when I grew older I fell asleep before he got home but I always woke up the next morning knew he had been by my bedside the night before years later my older brother shared my room for a while he was 6 4 in the Marine Corps but when he came home on leave my father would walk around to his bed huggin kisum whispered in his ear he loved him when I was 16 years old I was just a child all sixteen year olds are just children as much as we'd like them to be adults they're just children and like all children they need their mother and they need their father all children need their mother and their father all children are entitled to their mother and their father and though it is not popular to say so divorce is a very devastating thing for a child to deal with and then have to deal with the rest of their natural life for me a complete stranger said I had to choose one parent over the other there was no choice so I ran how could I tell you my life was glamorous I cried myself to sleep till I was 19 years old I spent every birthday Christmas Mother's Day Father's Day in a hotel room somewhere in the world where people didn't even speak my language and the only people that associated with me were people who believed me to be their peer ten years older than I actually was I never got to go to a senior prom high school football game or even share a relationship with someone my own age I always knew I'd get caught only a fool would think otherwise the law sometimes sleeps but the law never dies I was caught I went to some very bad places my boys have grown up asking their mother why is it that dad wakes up in the middle the night and goes down the TV room because he doesn't turn the TV on he just sits there all night because there are things you can't forget things you're not meant to forget well I was sitting in that pitch-black cell in France my father 57 was climbing the subway stairs as he did every morning he was in great physical shave he just happened to trip on a step he reached his arm out to break his fall he slipped he hit his head on a rail he landed at the bottom of the step he was dead I didn't know he was dead I was sitting in that cell thinking about him how much I loved him how much I couldn't wait to see him hold him hug him kiss him tell him how sorry I was but I never got the opportunity to do that I was very fortunate because I was brought up in a great country where everyone gets a second chance I owe my country 800 times more than I could ever possibly repay it for the opportunities it's given me these past 35 years that is why I'm at the FBI today 26 years beyond my legal obligation to do so I have turned down three pardons from three sitting presidents of the United States because I do not believe nor will I ever believe that a piece of paper will excuse my actions that only in the end my actions will 34 years ago on an undercover assignment in Houston Texas I met my wife when the assignment was over for the first time I broke protocol to tell her who I really was didn't have a dime to my name I eventually asked her to marry me against the wishes of her parents she did now I could sit here and tell you I saw the light was born again I could tell you that prison rehabilitated me or I could just simply take a cheap shot and say I was a kid who made some mistakes and grew up but the truth is God gave me a wife she gave me three beautiful children she gave me a family and she changed my life she and she alone everything I have everything I've achieved Who I am because of love of a woman and the respect three boys have for their father something I would never ever jeopardize there comes a time in all of our lifetimes of we grow older and we have children and as every parent in this room knows whether your child is three month sold or 43 years old when you lay your head on a pillow at night and you're just about to close your eyes the last thing you worry about the last thing you think about are your children so if you still have your mother you still have your father you give him a hug you give him a kiss you tell them you love them into those men in the audience obviously very successful men both young and old I would remind you what it truly is to actually be a man it has nothing to do with money achievements skills accomplishments degrees professions positions a real man loves his wife a real man is faithful to his wife and a real man next to God in his country put his wife and his children as the most important thing in his life Steven Spielberg made a wonderful film but I've done nothing greater nothing more rewarding nothing more worthwhile nothing has brought me more peace more joy more happiness or calm in my life than simply being a good husband a good father what I strive to be every day in my life a great daddy it's been a pleasure being with you today thank you very much I appreciate it thank you and we do have with us today students two tables of students of marketing and newspapers students from Wellington high school and they're here with their principal Mario crocheting and we have a special thanks to our student sponsors and that is Martha McNeil of McNeil consulting and Sid Stubbs of Jones Foster Johnson and Stubbs so will the students and their sponsors please stand to be recognized thank you and our questions everybody knows our first two questions always come from our students and they tend to be fabulous questions so if we have our first speaker hi my name is Eliza Sh line I'm Co editor-in-chief of the newspaper lines in high school and my question for you is in all your years working with FBI have you ever caught people who remind you yourself yeah unfortunately everyday it is absolutely amazing to me the two things about crime in my 35 years at the FBI has been one the simplicity of it forty years ago for me to forge a check I needed a Heidelberg printing press the press was a million dollars it was 90 feet long 18 feet high required three journeyman printers to operate it as Steven Spielberg showed in the movie I built scaffolding on either side of the press so I could bring myself to the top of the press with the purpose of eliminating the other two printing positions I was just a teenager so I was able to run the length of that press but there were color separations and there were negatives and there were plates and there were typesetting and the skill to create all of that took a great deal of time and energy and even then when you created a check that might have been a Pan Am payroll check you really didn't know where Pan Am banked and you really didn't know what Pan Am's account number was and you certainly didn't know who the authorized signer of Pan Am checks were but move ahead 40 years today someone just sits down at a laptop opens it goes to Delta Airlines website captures their corporate logo in full color and puts it up in the left-hand corner of a check in color they actually put the plane taking off in the background of a delta aircraft with the tail section of the plane up into the sky screened into the background and they're able to create a four color check in about 15 minutes they can go to a stationery store and buy cheque paper they have a color printer and can print it out and because we live in a too much information world they can call their victim who always tell them everything they want to know so by calling their victim like Delta Airlines they would simply ask for accounts receivables and when the clerk came on they would say that they were getting ready to pay an invoice and they would like to wire Delta the money Delta would then tell them where they banked on what's account number what's three four so cetera and then they would call back and ask for corporate communications to get a copy of their annual report and when they got a copy on page 3 would be the signature of the chairman of the board the CEO the CFO the treasurer on white glossy paper black ink camera-ready art so the technology has obviously made crime become a lot easier to do it's certainly much more global today so there are people you deal with now in Russia China Libya around the world that are committing crimes in our country but without having to leave their country an enforcement of that is extremely difficult so you have to privatized by dollar amounts and the value of the crime in order to take the very limited resources at your disposal to go fight those crimes it is also amazing to me that we live and unfortunately in an extremely unethical society we live in a society where we don't teach ethics at home we live in a society where we don't teach ethics in school because the teacher would be accused of teaching morality we live in a society where you can't find a four-year college course on ethics I've had three sons go to graduate school only the one that went to law school had a course on ethics consequently today there are people who have lacked a great deal of character in ethics but we can develop the most sophisticated security systems in the world the most sophisticated software and hardware but we have to rely on a human being to operate it or administer it and if that human being lacks just an ounce of character or ethics in their makeup the system is doomed to failure every day that I travel and I travel for the Bureau about four days a week I can bypass TSA at the airport I don't I purposely go through TSA because every day I try to ask myself if I was carrying something how would I get through here and every day I realized that everything is based on one person if I can get to one person out of the 22 people that are standing there I win and they lose so everything is based on that TSA employees character and their ethics if they lack them I win and they lose as a country we're standing now at white collar crime at 954 billion dollars a year seven percent of our gross national product that's just white-collar crime the public corruption is the worst it has ever been in the history of our country and we have got to as a country go back and decide that we have got to bring character and ethics back into the school system into the homes certainly back into the universities and back into the workplace because crime through technology is only going to get easier and until we do something about the way people think about committing those crimes were doomed to a lot of problems so yes it's changed a lot we catch people every day and they're very creative but like all of them whether the Unabomber whoever it is somewhere along the line they're going to make a mistake and eventually just like me they'll get caught so the law sometimes sleeps but the law never dies and eventually it will be caught any other questions yes so I have one more student pray okay my name is Josh Haber and I'm the other co-editor-in-chief of the high school publication at well it's in high school and my question for you is if you can go back and tell the sixteen-year-old version of yourself one thing what would it be I know that all of us have heard the expression that life is short that's not true life is actually very long my generation many will live to be 80 90 years old younger generations like my children well past their hundred birthday life is very long and when you make a mistake in life you have to live with that mistake for a long long time so it brings a tremendous burden to one's life when you mistreat someone in high school you mistreat someone in a relationship you deceive someone you lie to someone you caused havoc in another person's life or you commit a crime all of those things you will have to live with some day they may not bother you now they may not bother you for five or ten or fifteen or twenty years but they will come back to bother you so I would say to a young person 16 years old that before you can you bring yourself a tremendous burden you have to live with for 80 or 90 years you should think about what you do before you make that decision most people would take three minutes before they committed a crime they wouldn't commit the crime if they just stopped three minutes and said if I steal this money how will this affect my family how it affect my mother how it affect my siblings how it'll affect my life and thought about it for three minutes they wouldn't commit the crime so I would just simply say stop and think whether it be a relationship or whether it's committing a crime about something you have to live with for a long long long time we have a number of questions from the audience first is what would you do what would you be doing now if you had not gotten caught well obviously I always knew I get caught there's no question I would have gotten I would have eventually got caught and of course that it is true when you run for a long time you're ready to be caught I didn't have it in me to go give myself up I was just a teenager but I was very scared I knew that I eventually would get caught and I knew I had to face the music but once you caught it's a great relief that you are it's over with and you can start going in a different direction or you can do something with your life so I wouldn't want to have even if I could possibly have gotten away with I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life on the run or looking over my shoulder so I think that you know if I had never gotten in any trouble I probably would have went on to be an entrepreneur or some kind of businessman in business for myself and probably done something along that line how honest were you with your son's about your background as they were growing up and what lessons did you pass on to them about what how they handled themselves today my oldest boy who is the FBI agent when he was about 10 years old I gave him a copy of catch me if you can he was a very avid reader and I asked him to read the book and I told him not to discuss it with me until he finished reading it he said fine he read it in a couple of days when he was done with that I said you understand that I'm the person in the book and he said yes and you understand what it is I do today he said yes and my children I think have always judged me based on how I treated them and how I treated their mother how am i as father and how am i as the husband of their mother and how I treated their mother so my boys have grown up just really simply not relating to the person I was at 16 years old but just relating to me as their father and how I treated them and so I did that with each of my children but I also realized it was very important for me to instill a great deal of ethics in character in them and that I had to do everything right so that they understood the difference between right and wrong because of who I was I probably over emphasized that I remember one time we pulled up at a Wendy's and they were probably emphasized that I remember one time we pulled up at a Wendy's and they were probably the oldest one was 12 or 13 and we gave the girl a $10 bill and she gave me at the window change for a 20 so I told her she made a mistake and I'd only given her ten dollar bill and when I drove away one of the boys said well dad you could have made some money you could have kept that and I remember pulling over and explaining to them that first of all I didn't need the money so there was no benefit to me doing that second that young girl probably would have lost her job because at the end of the day she would have checked up short and in Bobby gotten fired and was it worth taking the $10 so there were always those lessons along the way with my kids and I've been very blessed they turned out to be wonderful young man how did you survive jail question well it's just like anything else you survive because you have to survive the French prison was a horrible place but you basically have no choice but to conform and you conform so you're in a black cell and you're sleeping on the floor and you go in the bathroom and a hole in the floor and that's where you are and that you just have to mentally realize that you're in there now when I was in the French prison because I was still very young I used to take myself away from there just using my vivid imagination and I would just make-believe I was somewhere else for hours on end during the daytime too to keep myself from realizing I was just in that one cell I went from there to the Swedish prisons which is like going from there to the Hilton Hotel it was a totally opposite environment the way they treated you was totally opposite of the way the French did and then I went to an American prison for four years which was somewhere in between where you were gun towers and you were confined in a in a prison so it was a same thing a matter of adjusting that you're there and you're going to be there so you have to do the best you can and when I was in the federal prison system I knew I never graduated high school so I went and got my GED while I was in prison we had a program through the University of Virginia where you could take three hours of credit every night for college so I took courses during the four years I was there so I could get equivalent of a couple years of college before I came out of prison so I just adjusted to the fact of being here and I think all human beings when put in an environment and they have no choice they can adapt and adjust to that environment if they need to one FBI agent dogged Lee pursued you through your years of crime during which you established a relationship bordering on friendship and evolving into a working relationship after your prison term how did the agent impact your life tremendously as you know in the movie was played by Tom Hanks his name was in the movie call Hanratty his real name was Joseph che SH EA he was an Irishman from Boston as oh Tom Hanks did an incredible job with the accent portraying him he looked like him he acted like him he had his mannerisms in the film he and I were friends for over thirty years he was my boss at the FBI for ten years till he retired from the Bureau and he and I stayed friends 20 years after that he had two daughters I watched the daughters grow up I watched them get married or watch them have children and their children grow up and just a couple of years ago at the age of 88 he passed away but he lived a great life sound mines great health up until his death I've written five books on crime the last book I wrote was called stealing your life about identity theft and in that book I dedicated the book to him in our long-term 30-year relationship he was on the set of the movie during the entire filming of the movie as a consultant of the film along with the two younger agents who are still living today and they're in their early 70s they live up in Pennsylvania but the two younger agents that you saw in the film or art were on the set as well so Steven Spielberg had their input during the film and why did the u.s. government pull you out of prison after four years what did they see in you and who made this decision as many of you may know the FBI celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2008 and in their anniversary book said that of course I was the only person they ever did that with I came to the bureau right after Hoover under Clarence Kelly who was a director of the FBI who later went on to become the chief of police in Kansas City and Clarence Kelly was someone who got a great deal of input from Joe Shea about the ability for me to come and teach agents how to think out of the box and the bureau was very smart because the first thing I did was go to the FBI Academy where I've taught now for 35 years so besides my job out in the field I teach at the FBI Academy all agents who go through the Academy including my son when he went through the FBI Academy five years ago I taught him as well and so those agents get to know me from the day they become FBI agents and cross the stage and get their credentials so I was here last week down to Miami field office I get to go out to all of our 56 field offices usually during the year period time so I travel a great deal so they all got to know me and that was a great way of doing it but it was a very much a building credibility it took years and years to do that there was a great deal of resentment that the government did that there was a you the FBI was a totally different FBI back then so it took years to earn people's trust and of course that is why when someone writes me unfortunately and says I just went to prison for this and I'm coming out of prison I'd like to do what you did I'd like to do something positive it's very difficult and I explained to them you can do it because we live in a great country that will let you do it but it will take years to build that credibility you can't just come out and expect people to trust you the next day you have to earn their trust you have to earn their credibility and so it takes it took a long time but obviously it was well worth I am very privileged that's why I'm there 26 years later I work with 12,500 agents who are the most ethical human beings I've ever met who are the most loving above their country of family and I cannot begin to even remotely tell you what they do every day of their life to make sure that we are safe things that you would never hear about you'll never read about that they do every single day of their life and how they go out of their way and away from their own families my own son just came back from Austria where he was over on an assignment God knows what he was doing there but he was away from his family while I was on that assignment oh they obviously is an honor and a privilege for me to be able to serve my country and work with such incredible men and women does anything you currently do with the FBI cross over into the area of Homeland Security not really other than a little bit to do with terrorism because as you know terrorists gain their money from white-collar related crimes whether it be credit card fraud and things of that nature so only when it gets into my areas and financial crimes crimes against financial institutions public corruption Enron's the world comes the Tyco the Arthur Andersen type of crimes that we've dealt with the made offs of the world etc so on the very high dollar end of those financial financial crimes but occasionally those financial crimes do cross the border over to where the terror where it gets involved to the terrorist side and my son who is what we refer to as a counterintelligence agent that's the breadth what he'll do the rest of his life he'll never investigate a kidnapping a bank robbery or go out on a public corruption case or something like he will always be a terror terrorism agent he will always be dealing with protecting our country as a counterintelligence agent that'll be his job so the Bureau has changed tremendously in the way they have to deal with crimes and the things that Congress has assigned them the duties to do your consulting firm has worked with more than 14,000 financial institutions corporations and law enforcement agencies on fraud prevention what do you see is the biggest scam attempts out there the biggest problem we have right now of course is identity theft I've written three books on that subject it's absolutely an amazing crime to me the first book I wrote there was seven hundred and fifty thousand victims the last book I wrote there were 15 million victims of the crime or one every four seconds in the United States if you haven't been a victim it's just because no one picked on you we've already had 285 million electronic files hacked into there are only 350 million Americans living in the United States it is an enormous crime every day that happens because someone is able to get information there are two things here one you have got to stop giving out your information the law only requires five incidences where you are to supply your social security number on demand you do not go to rent a storage unit and give them your social security number you don't go join the gym and give them your social security number just because someone asks you for that information you don't give it to them today you have to be a little smarter and a little wiser I don't write a lot of checks because if I go to CVS or Walgreens and I write them a $9 check I have to leave them the check on the check is my name and address my bank's name and address my account number at my bank my routing number into my account my signature at the bank then the clerk at CVS wrote my driver's license on the front and my date of birth we live in what we call truncation which means you don't get the cheque back the cheque sits in a warehouse at CBS in Brooklyn unsecured for six months anyone who sees the face of that cheque can draft on your bank account so god forbid that's off your private banking account your wealth management account your money market account where you may have a great deal sum of money in there I don't use a debit card I've never owned a debit card I've never allowed my children to have a debit card it is truly the worst tool American banks have given to American consumer who jumped on it and never really thought it out I removed from my life literally 99.9% of all liability and risk by using the safest tool that exists today and that's a credit card credit card whose credit card is irrelevant American Express Visa MasterCard Discover because the way the federal statutes are written I have zero liability so I use my credit card every day of my life I spend the credit card companies money I literally don't spend my money it sits in a money market account earning interest and I travel to the tune of $30,000 a month I don't use my money in advance of it I use a credit card companies money if I go to the drycleaner credit card pick up groceries credit card get my shoes repaired credit card get the carwash credit card every day I spend their money if someone looks over my shoulder and I'll do everything to make sure they don't they get my number and they charge $1,000,000 on my credit card my liability is zero I have none no liability if I buy something in a store it turns out faulty I return it they say I'm not going to give you your money back I'd have to assume in small claims court I use a credit card US fine because when I get the bank statement from B's I'll just put a line through that and I'll dispute it you'll have to deal with Visa I really don't care and off I go every day that you use a debit card you're exposing your money every time you use that card you're using your money you're exposing your money you are absolutely doing nothing for your credit you're not raising your credit score by one point so we have a lot of young people now going through college using their debit cards then they come out of college they can't lease an apartment they can't buy a car they can't purchase a house because they have no credit they built zero credit because they've only used their debit card when you use a credit card you build credit so I had three sons go up to college I said to him I'm not giving you a debit card I'm giving you a supplemental card off my credit card so to have your name on it it'd be your card but I get the bill and I'm responsible for the bill and I do this for two reasons one so that I know how you're spending your money to spend a lot of time in a bar I'm going to know about it too every month that I pay that it goes on your credit score so when you come out of college in four years six years whenever it is you won't need me to co-sign a note you'll need me to lease property for you or co-sign a Lease UB do it your own when you read about the incident we had with t.j.maxx forty five million credit card stolen everyone that had a debit card waited an average of two months to get their money back so you didn't have the money in your account it was out you were trying to pay your rent you're a young kid in college trying to pay your tuition you had to wait two months everyone that had a credit card at t.j.maxx got a new card overnighted by their credit card provider or within 10 days they received their new credit card and went on about their business it is a much and safer form of payment I don't worry about buying something online if they don't ship it turns out faulty it's no good I used a credit card so I just go back to the credit card company it's the safest form of payment that exists today thank you and for our last question which is more accurate the movie or the book the book was written by Stan Redding who was a very famous police reporter who was a commander in the United States Navy he was a Texas Ranger I thought he did an incredible job of being much closer to the actual story in the book Steven Spielberg obviously said this is the first time I've ever made a movie about a real person living it was an extremely difficult test to do especially without access to that person so he tried to stay as close as he could to the story but I thought he did a great job he changed very minor things in the film and of course anytime you're taking five years of someone's life and putting into two hours of film there are certain things you have to do and I thought he did a great job of staying as close as he could to the film I thought that Leonardo DiCaprio who at the time he made the movie was 27 years old he would just filmed Gangs of New York - he was able to transform from that to what looked like a 16 year old boy in the movie and they acted his mannerisms everything he did through the film as he aged in the film 16 18 20 he did an incredible job of playing the part and again that he has said in interviews extremely difficult to do when you don't have the ability to beat the person know the person and you're simply pretending to be that person and try to learn their mannerisms without having access to them but in the end I thought they did a they did a great job it's been an absolute pleasure thank you for your patience and thanks for being

Channel: GBH Forum Network

Views: 588,284

Rating: 4.7412658 out of 5

Keywords: Frank Abagnale (Author), Catch Me If You Can (Award-Winning Work), Film (Media Genre), Biopics

Id: x0fEA0MsiV8

Length: 62min 27sec (3747 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 25 2014