Catch Me If You Can: The Real Story with Frank Abagnale

[Music] thank you to everybody for being here we are really proud at threat advice to be the presenting sponsor for the conference this year and it's been I don't know where they are but the the tech Birmingham people have been wonderful to work with it's really been a great thing and a threat advice we are a cyber security company and we focus on three areas one is non-technical cyber education for employees and we feel like that's important for protecting any organization awareness exercises such as phishing tests and then real-time intelligence and so we have a security focus and I've always wanted to have a spokesperson enough talk to different people thought about different people over the last few years and nothing's ever worked out but one day in marketing meeting back a while ago all of a sudden Frank Abagnale popped in my mind I've always loved the movie catch me if you can if you hadn't seen it absolutely do if you hadn't read the book do it because it's more exciting than the movie and so anyway he popped in my mind is this would be a perfect person to be our spokesperson because of these world-renowned insecurities the father of social engineering and just a lot of different reasons and so I got him left the meeting and went and googled him and went to his website in sent a note on the contact page going that's the last time I'll probably ever think about this got a response in literally 30 minutes which is cool because most people don't respond to their contact us pages and and mr. Ravenel is very interested who knows exactly what y'all do and would love to talk fast forward a week or two we had a deal worked out for him to be our spokesperson it's been really really neat having somebody that's as renowned in him as him in the security world and and to be the face of our company and to to know him bring has been just such a blessing he's a become a good friend of mine and so we're honored as the presenting sponsor today to bring him here and he's going to tell everyone his life story which is riveting and then we'll have a Q&A session after that but I would love for everyone to stand up and give mr. Frank Abagnale like great Birmingham welcome [Applause] thank you very much it's a pleasure to be here and thank all of you for attending today's presentation and normally when I walked into the podium it is always to speak about fraud cybercrime identity theft embezzlement financial crimes but occasionally I get an event where they asked me to talk about my life and Steve has asked me to do that today and of course I've had a lot of people tell my story I had a great writer write a book about my life had a great film director make a movie about my life had a great Broadway musical team make a Tony award-winning Broadway musical about my life at a popular television show on TV for four years white collar created around my life many of those very creative people have actually never met me personally but they have truly enjoyed telling my story from what appears to be their point of view so I thought I would just take a few minutes to tell you the story actually from my point of view I was raised just north of New York City in Westchester County New York I was actually one of four children in the family the so called middle child to the fore I was educated there by the Christian Brothers of Ireland in a private Catholic school called Iona in New Rochelle 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 are 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 one afternoon and asked her brother to excuse me from class when it 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 or I would meet my parents they would explain what was going on I remember the brother dropped me at the steps of a big stone building told me to go on up the steps and my parents be waiting for me in the lobby I remember climbing the steps seeing a sign on the building said family court but I wasn't quite sure what that meant when I arrived in the lobby and 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 so I walked up to stand in between my parents I remembered distinctly that the judge never looked at me he 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 and my father never saw me or ever spoke to me again in the mid-1960s running away it 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 in my home packed him in a bag bored of what was then in 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 on the corner of 40th and Madison and like all of us we had to work in the store so from the time I was about 13 in this summer I would make deliveries for my dad on a bike 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 for a delivery boy part-time I'd walk in and apply so tell me a man holy 16 how far you go in high school tenth grade I'll hire 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 and school used to say that once a week when we just in a suit to attend Mass I look more like a teacher than a student so I decided to lie about my age in New York we had a driver's license at 16 back then they didn't have a photo on it just an IBM card so I altered just one digit of my date of birth I was actually born in April of 1948 but I dropped the fork and 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 did give me a little more money a few more hours but even then it was very difficult to make ends meet one of the few things I had taken while 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 little money in that account so every so often I would write a check to supplement my income $20 $25 the funds were there the checks were good but it was my friends my peers who would constantly say to me you know you're the only guy 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 a desk and they okay your check oh well my checks are good I walked in my bank they wouldn't touch my check you walk in they don't bat an eye I use later reporter to write and say 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 checks started to bounce police started looking for me as a runaway so I thought maybe was a good time to start thinking about leaving New York City but I was quite apprehensive about going to Chicago Miami I wondered if they'd cash a New York check on a 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 approach 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 an Eastern Airlines flight crew onto the sidewalk I couldn't help but notice the captain the copilot the flight engineer about three or four flight attendants dragging their bags to the curb to load him in a van to take him to the airport as they loaded the van I thought to myself that's it I could pose as a pilot I could travel all 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 a little further to 42nd and Park I went to cross over but I heard a huge helicopter so I looked up and there was New York Airways landing on the the Pan Am building Pan Am the nation's flag carrier the airline that flew around the world I thought what a perfect airline to use so the next 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 gonna say when they answered Pan American Airlines good morning could help you yes ma'am I'd like to speak to somebody in the somebody in the purchasing department purchasing one moment the clerk came on say yes American I mean 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 been anything like this come up before oh it's a problem 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 their cleaner said they can't find it here I'm with the flight in about four hours no uniform don't you have a spare uniform certainly back home in San Francisco but I would 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 they're our supplier I'll call them and let them know you're on their way well that's exactly what I wanted to know so I went down to the wellville Uniform Company little fellow mr. Rosen fitted me out in a uniform there were black gabardine two three gold stripes on their arm the gray hair I certainly looked old enough to be the pilot when he was all done I said how much do you love the uniforms two hundred eighty six dollars it's a no problem I write you a check no we can't take any checks oh well I'll just pay your cash we can't accept cash you need to fill out this computer card then in these boxes put your employee number and 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 and Kenny to LaGuardia was 20 minutes from Manhattan Kennedy was 50 so naturally LaGuardia being the closer the two that's where I went I spent most of the morning walking around LaGuardia in the uniform trying to figure out now that I had the uniform how the hell did 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 and ordered a sandwich moments later a TWA crew walked in the flight attendants sat in the booth but the pilots up at the counter on either side of me the captain right next to me now back before deregulation of the airlines airline thought of themselves as just one big family they didn't hesitate a moment to talk to each other so the captain kind of leaned over a young man that's Pan Am doing doing just fine captain tell me what's Pan Am doing out here LaGuardia and M doesn't fly into LaGuardia they only fly into Kennedy well I've picked up on that right away yeah we came into Kennedy but had a layover so I came over to visit some friends matter of fact I'm on my way back to Kennedy right now so tell me young man what type of equipment are you on now airline people have a lot of jargon for things and 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 meant what type of plane do you fly back then the dc-8 a 707 of course I didn't know that and I thought type of equipment and my own only equipment amount is this stool they must mean what type of equipment is on the planes I fly so they got the wings the engine 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 leaned over cabin said oh really what do you fly washing machine so I know I said the wrong thing out the door I went everybody had an airline ID card a plastic card much like a driver's license today without the ID card the uniform was absolutely worthless went back to Manhattan pretty discouraged thinking where would I come up with the pan-american airline corporate ID I was sitting in the hotel room I noticed a big thick Manhattan yellow pages so I pulled him down on the bed and I 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 hey listen most of those airline IDs are manufactured by Polaroid 3m company need to call one of them finally get 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 I tell you I'm a purchasing officer for a major US carrier I'm in New York just for the day and we're getting ready to expand our routes hire a lot of new employers go to a formal ID we're very impressed with the Pan Am format wonder 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 rep opened a book yeah we do national United Braniff Pan Am Pan Am we like this Pan Am format and if you 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 writing across the front this is a sample only I said no I'm afraid this one to you and I need to bring back an actual physical card and by the way what is all this equipment on the floor I know we don't just sell this car we sell this system camera laminator we have to buy all this yes well tell you what since we have to buy it all I wanted to just demonstrate how it works and use me fine have a seat right here took my picture made up the car I was going down the elevators studying the card it had a blue border across the top not a quarter of an inch and Pan Am's color blue but not a single thing on the card said Pan Am no logo no insignia no company name this is 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 it was walking back I noticed it I had passed a hobby shop so I turned around and walked back excuse me sir see you sell a lot of models here so models of commercial jetliners sure over there and I bought a model of a Pan Am 707 cargo jet 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 one on the model and when soaked in a glass of water the little Pan Am blue globe 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 their special styling or graphics that would have went on their fuselage weren't 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 boarded more than 260 commercial aircraft in more than 26 countries around the world 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 because I was afraid someone might say you know I'm based out in San Francisco been out there 16 years I don't recall of a meeting you before but someone might say you know your ID cards 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 up on the board United flight 800 to Chicago then it went downstairs the door marked United operations and walked in the operations clerk a Pan Am what can we do for you I was one if the jump seats open on 800 needed it edge of Chicago it's open to see me like to get a pink slip pass I'd give my I deed right now to pass I walk 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 to jump see where pilots dead head 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 be around 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 right seat which is airline terminology for a co-pilot the type of equipment are you on had that one down perfect matter of fact whatever they flew I didn't fly so I no problems with that 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 right yes sir two years since I've laid over here yes sir Parma House Hilton downtown catch a crew bus low level door three up I'd go down the Parma House Hilton walk in and on the corner of the registration death was a little sign said airline cruise that was a three-ring binder you've signed in reference your flight numbers showed your ID they'd give me a key I'd stayed two or three days and panin would be direct bill from my room and my meals as you know I went on to impair sated doctor into Georgia Hospital I actually took the State Bar exams in the state of Louisiana I passed the state bar exams in the state I went to work for then Attorney General PF grimmy on in the Civil Division of the state court where I spent about a year during the job as a doctor and the lawyer no one ever doubted for a second I was not that individual it was I on my own who resigned in laughs of course like any criminal sooner or later you get caught and I was no exception to that rule I was arrested actually just once in my life by the French police when I was 21 years old and a small town in southern France calm on PA the French police were actually arresting me on an Interpol warrant issued by the Swedish police who were looking for me for forgery in Sweden but believe that I was residing in France when the French authorities took me to custody and Swedish warrant they realized I had forged checks all over France so they refused to honor the warrant and Sweden's request for my extradition they later convicted me of forgery and sent me to French prison I served my time in a place called de maison de ray the house of arrest in a small town in southern france called Pepin young Steven Speilberg told Barbara Walters it was extremely important to me to go back to that prison back to the exact cell he was in and reconstructed according to the logbooks during his stay there which he said to my amazement was a blanket on the floor in no mattress a hole in the floor to go to the bathroom no plumbing no electricity he said according to the prison's log books I entered the prison at a hundred ninety-eight pounds left the prison at a hundred and nine pounds when my sentence was over in France I was extradited to Sweden where I was later convicted of forgery in a Swedish court of law and sent to a Swedish Penitentiary in Malmo Sweden when my prison term was up in Sweden US federal authorities took custody of me and returned me to the United States eventually a United States federal judge in Atlanta Georgia would sentence me to 12 years in federal prison I served four of those 12 years at a federal prison in Petersburg Virginia when I was 26 years old the government offered to take me out of prison that I go to work for an agency of the federal government for the remainder of my sentence or until my parole had been completed I agreed and was released this year I'm celebrating 43 years at the FBI I've been at the bureau for more than four decades I work out of Washington DC I make my home in Charleston South Carolina I commute up to DC every Monday morning and back home on Thursdays I live in Charleston with my one and only wife of 42 years and my three sons my youngest boy graduated from the University of Beijing in China he went on to get his master's degree there he reads right speaks Chinese fluently for 10 years in Beijing he divined video games for an American gaming company for mobile phones in China all of his games became very popular they're all a course in Chinese the company brought him back to Dallas Texas now to redesign the doom game for its 25th anniversary this year and he is a senior producer on that game that's being developed to celebrating dooms 25th anniversary my middle son graduate of University of Nevada in Las Vegas with his wife they both own a company based in Charleston South Carolina it's a of women's clothing store college girls and little older and is based out of Charleston South Carolina and my oldest boy graduated from University of Kansas at K U he went on to Loyola School of Law in Chicago to get his law degree and passed the bar in Illinois he went on to make his dad very very proud he's an FBI agent celebrating 14 years in the bureau now he's our supervisor over our kidnapping team which is a response team that operates at a Quantico Virginia as many of you know I had very little to do with the film I actually raised my three boys in Tulsa Oklahoma in the same house for 25 years and for 25 years I commuted to Washington DC and for 25 years my neighbors had no idea who I was but Steven Spielberg said he felt compelled to tell the world the story not because of what I had done at 16 but because of what I had done was my life in the end my family were and I were very pleased about the film and we thought in a couple years that would all go away I never dreamed that catch me if you can will go on to earn more than a billion dollars for DreamWorks and be shown over and over on television become a Broadway musical now plating community theater in high schools around the country and become a popular show consequently every Monday when I go to work and I say this without exaggeration since 2002 I have emails on my desk sometimes I can read them all sometimes I can't what's interesting is that they come from people all over the world and they come from people as young as eight to people as old as 80 they're seeing the movie for the first time they're watching the show for the first time they're seeing the play for the first time reading the book for the first time and they feel compelled to write I'm sure that they figure I'll never see their email but they want to write anyway and they feel they want to make a statement many of them write and say you know you would you were brilliant you were absolute genius I was neither I was just a child I was 16 years old that have been brilliant at a pen ingenious I don't know that it 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 50 years ago I always looked upon what I did is something that was immoral illegal unethical and a burden I live with every single day of my life and will until my death there are many who write and say well you know you were certainly gifted that it was I was one of those few children that got to grow up in the world with the daddy now 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 shoes without ever having met Frank I couldn't help but put his father in the film so 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 right up on your earlobe and he'd whisper deep in your I love you I love you very much he never ever missed a night as I grew older I sometimes fell asleep before he got home but I always woke up the next morning knew he was by my bedside years later my older brother join her in my room temporarily he was 6 4 in the Marine Corps he went on to play semi-pro football for Buffalo but my father would walk around to his bed hug him kiss him whisper in his ear he loved him when I was 16 year old 16 years old I was just a child all 16 year olds are just children much as we like them to be adults they're just children all children they need their mother and they need their father all children need 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 strangers that I had to choose one parent over the other that was a choice a sixteen-year-old boy could not make so I turned and 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 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 his senior prom High School football games share a relationship with someone my own age I always knew I'd get caught only a fool or think otherwise the loss sometimes sleeps but the long never dies I was caught went to some very bad places my boys have grown up asking their mother why is it dad gets up in the middle the night and goes down the TV room because you know 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 of New York as he did every day he was in great physical shape he just happened to trip he reached his arm out to break this fall he slipped it his head on a railing when at the bottom of the stairs he was dead I didn't know he was dead I was sitting in that cell I was thinking about him how much I couldn't wait to see him hold hug 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 everybody gives you a second chance I owe my country 800 times more than I will ever be able to repay it in my lifetime that is why I'm at the FBI today 36 years after a federal court order has expired requiring and mandating me 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 well 42 years ago on an undercover assignment in used in Texas I met my wife when the assignment was over I broke protocol to tell her who I really was I didn't have a dime to my name but I eventually asked her to marry me against the wishes of her parents she did I could sit up here and tell you that I was born again I saw the light a prison rehabilitated me 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 today did 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 a wee girl and if we're fortunate enough we have children and as every parent knows whether your child's four months old or 40 years old when you lay a head on a pillow at night no matter where that pillow is and you are just about to close your eyes the last image you see the last thing you worry about are your children so if you still have your mother still have your father you give him a hug you give him a kiss you tell them you love them while you can into those men in the audience both young and old I think the most valuable lesson that I learned from all of this was the answer to a simple question what is it to actually be a real man it has nothing to do with money achievements skills accomplishments degrees 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 has 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 more content in my life than simply being a good husband a good father and what I strive to be every day of my life a great daddy thank you very much for having me it's been a pleasure being here thank you very much thank you thank you very much as Steve mentioned I'll be happy to take questions those questions can be about any subject matter you have a question about and I'll be happy to try and answer those questions for you I will tell you that I do maintain a website obviously I sell no products I provide no services is strictly an educational site it's just my name Abagnale com everything that I've ever written is up on my website every subject matter from embezzlement check forgery to counterfeiting to identity theft to the counterfeiting of luxury items promise suta calls and goods and decipher crime is on my site every interview I've ever done for Forbes magazine whilst the The Wall Street Journal the New York Times on cyber they have always done as a QA so they've asked me any question you can possibly think of dealing with cyber and I've answered it posted their articles up on my website under articles with Frank Abagnale some his recent is just a couple of days ago so they've addressed the issue and put it up there every year I published a 22 page booklet and have for 22 years I put it up on my website it's a four color booklet you can download it obviously no advertising no endorsements anything it is strictly information if you own a company work for a company everything is in there whether you're Joe's plumbing shop with three employees or your IBM everything you need to know about keeping that company safe from check forgery to embezzlement to every subject matter that companies unfortunately have to deal with every day and it is updated annually and kept constant there's a great information you'll find on my site and I'll be happy to take any questions so I have a question they have some microphones out in the audience I don't hear you yes sir criminals also have a sources for collaboration so that those crimes as a service is that on your website if you sell it's a little bit about the way they collaborate together obviously they collaborate on many many different formats that including the dark web and they have collaborated for years on whether it was even before cyber they collaborated there's why I've written six books I have a new book coming out on August 27 from Random House I've written six books dealing with fraud identity theft I always have to write those books being very careful to explain to a business person or a consumer this is how the crime works without actually telling them how to commit the crime and try to give as Alisa's information as I can so I am couraging someone to go do something they probably wouldn't normally do so that's a fine line that you walk but it's very important that you know I have taught at the FBI Academy for over 40 years I have taught two generations of FBI agents including my own son who went through the Academy 14 years ago and I have always believed that education is the most powerful tool to fighting crime unfortunately we have so much crime and we have an entire society of basically honest people and because they're honest they don't have a deceptive mind so when the phone rings and it says on the caller ID that it's the birmingham police department they assume it is - birmingham police department because no one has told them that you can easily manipulate caller ID to say whatever you want it to say and when they tell you they've arrested your grandson and they tell you what car he was driving that the passenger was his girlfriend and her full name and then they tell you the parents name and then they tell you the child said they didn't want him to call the parents but wanted him to call the grandparents because he needed to post bail in the next two hours I have to spend the weekend in jail and they're asking him to post bail obviously if no one has ever told them that never heard of that scam they would know exactly what to do but other than to believe it so my last book is basically if he calls scam me if you can because I've been an ambassador to AARP for the past five years I have written everything that they deal with their 38 million members deal with in crimes against the elderly I've created video training programs I run a podcast out of Washington DC every Wednesday that they basically listen to explaining these scams and how they work people call in from romance scams to internet scams to sweepstakes scams Clearing House scams you name it and basically if you walk them through it explain how it works and when they get that letter from the IRS that phone call from the IRS says you owe money you have to pay it immediately or they'll file a lien on your property they know that this goes right back to every month for the last every October for the last five years every day five days a week I'm at a fortune 500 company it is horrendous every day I get on the plane go to another fortune 500 company they book that out almost three years in advance so last year was at places like MasterCard IBM where they're literally bringing me into their company to address their thousands of employees and because there may be 15,000 employees at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus Ohio I have to go and speak seven or eight times during the day to them in the cafeteria but my message to them is the most important job they have whether they're the janitor or the CEO is keeping the information and trusted to them by their clients and their customers safe that's their most important job but again you have to teach them there is no technology there never will be any technology to defeat social engineering you can only defeat social engineering through education hey I will not be able to defeat social engineering there will always be human element so you have to teach people to know that they are being socially engineered it is not difficult to do but it is a step you have to take to educate your employees to keep that information safe otherwise these phishing emails and we get about 5,000 every single year in the United States those phishing emails are so sophisticated now that you have to believe it's real just based on how they're worded so I'll just share this with you the last couple I saw one was from the CEO to the CFO of a company out in the California this is a actually ironically a technology company with 4,000 employees good morning Robert wonderful dinner at your home last night with you and your wife Susan my wife Karen I really appreciated it by the way as I mentioned you over dinner I am leaving today for a week to go attend a conference in Nashville Tennessee I'll be back on Friday I forgot to mention you to wire $35,000 to this account for a charity that I promised I'd have it in there today by noon you please see it gets taken care of or the email to Susan from her friend Joan hi Susan great having lunch with you today we need to do that more often hope you and Robert have a great time with the kids at Disney World this week but when you get back that give me a call so we can do lunch again by the way I saw this on YouTube I thought you'd get a tremendous kick out of it below is the link this is because they had literally have gone to social media to get all of the information they need to make that email so perfect now the CEO has already said his wife numerous times on Facebook her name he said he was going to dinner the CFO is that his wife is name he said he was going to the conference two months earlier on Facebook they are literally taking information she told them her husband's name they were going to Disney World to put into that email to make that email so believable this is why is so important to train people this morning I've filmed 22 videos between 8:30 and 11:00 o'clock this morning 22 videos upstairs that dealt with educating employees in a very short easy-to-understand format so if they simply take the tip remember the tip then they will protect their company and they'll protect themselves and their family as well education is the most powerful tool to fight in crime whether I'm training an FBI agent or I'm training an elderly person through AARP it is all the same it all comes down to education and giving people tools so they can protect themselves with any other questions yes sir brilliant they are and how they could serve their country by doing time volunteering with the FBI as their form of community service and I always say they're going to reoffending off end the only person I know doesn't really know is Frank Abagnale because I've heard you speak but but what do you think about that concept that a young hacker should be given a chance to serve law enforcement knowing that there is a very high risk of recidivism there I would be all for it I can't tell you the elebrate the FBI has over a hundred years old I'm the only person they've ever done that experiment with they consider it a great success as I do however many times I get emails from people who are in prison that say I know this much information I'm a great hacker I'm very skilled on computers these are the things I'm capable of doing I want to straighten my life out I want to go straight I like to do what you've done I like to go to work for some company or government and use what I know in a positive way and I think that's wonderful but you have to earn trust first you cannot expect Microsoft to take you out of prison tomorrow and say to you I trust you to do this my five years the first at the FBI was undercover they only had to trust me to the agent I reported to it took a long time I thought Steven Spielberg did an amazing job of showing me coming to what was then the Washington field office and all the agents standing all of them were white all of them obviously were law degrees accountants tremendous resentment that the Bureau was taking this experiment but in the end I built the trust of those agents they realized it was important for me to be at the Academy so they knew who I was from day one and I had to continue to earn that trust and probably the most difficult thing in the 40 years was earning trust not only of government agents but of all the corporations I've worked for I've had the opportunity to work for more than 60% of the fortune 500 companies in this country but I had to earn that trust for those companies banks financial institutions to entrust me to do that work with them so that's what I tell them go earn the trust keep that positive thing that you want to turn your life around want to do something with it positive and then start to convince people that you are sincere and that you want their trust and people will always give you a second chance but you cannot expect to just walk out the door and that people should automatically trust you it doesn't work like that so you had a question I bet one of you days gentlemen right here not a great question as you know I've written many papers on crimes of the future I wrote about identity theft in 1988 in a white paper at the academy as where no computers we had no emails we didn't even know what identity theft was so I get that asked that question a lot about where we'll be and I do that because I believe it's important to teach our agents what were you investigate five years from now or you investigate ten years from now so what really bothers me and keeps me up at night is that we have the ability now right at this moment to shut someone's pacemaker off we just have to pass them on the sidewalk however we're restricted by a distance of thirty five feet any bodily device they have done we can control speed it up shut it down shut it off but we're restricted by distance we have the ability out on the interstate to pull a vehicle over but we know the vehicle typically has 240 computer components in it so we can take over the car we can take over the windows and lock them we can lock the person in the car we can turn on the airbag we can shut the engine off we can do that but we're extend restricted to 35 feet so we'd have to be up on that car at 35 feet distance in order to achieve that my question is in five years from now you'll be able to do that from fifty miles five hundred miles five thousand miles away right now they are going in and taking MRIs and putting people's tumors in them we arrested a doctor two years ago in Michigan he had 380 patients he was a cancer doctor each one of them he inserted in their MRI that he they had a tumor none of them had a tumor but he treated them and then billed Medicare for more than 33 million dollars happy to say that a US federal judge last year gave him 47 years in prison those are the things that worry me that we are able to manipulate things we can take now video and put someone at a scene of a crime even though they'd never been in that state or anywhere near that vicinity just through manipulation we can make someone get up in front of a camera like President Obama and make statements that he never made simply because we can make it believable that he's making no statements by the ability we have with technology so I personally feel up until this moment cybercrime is all about money financial crimes making money selling data data is money but five years from now it's all about shutting down electrical stream setting down banking systems taking over individuals assassinating people it certainly absolutely will become much more of a block or tool five years from now than it has today and this is why it is so important that we continue this goal of trying to develop technology to defeat a lot of these things that we know are going to happen and that we take a look am I will be honest with you I sat in meetings 20 years ago on protecting the electrical grid and there's still no same thing it was 20 years ago so obviously unless we stop talking about and actually do it we are going to have a lot of problems with cyber in the future yes sir I'm sorry it's one of you answer most of my question but I'll stay actually just found just a little bit because we are creating cyber criminals at a much faster rate than we're creating soverign professionals I've seen the FBI is retraining employees to become sovereign poised governors are signing initiatives with to being able to bring high school students into cyber programs and realistically we are losing this battle so where do you see I know you just mentioned the power grid attacks is that is that the extent or where do you see the breaking point is where is this all headed and what will be the critical point where things will have to change you know I've dealt four years with crimes against the federal government because that's part of my job and there's government agencies so last year Medicare and Medicaid paid out over a hundred billion dollars of the taxpayers money in fraudulent claims that was the 11th year in a row that they paid out over a hundred billion dollars in fraudulent claims ten percent of Medicare and Medicaid combined budget Medicare was excuse me unemployment fraud was seven point seven billion dollars we had IRS scams you name it the government losses will in excess of four hundred billion dollars a year to fraud from criminals who don't even live in this country there is no bank there is no corporation in America that could stand those losses this is why I always tell people that your information and your money is much safer at a bank than would ever be at the government the government is very weak when it comes to keeping this information safe and that's consequently why the criminal has started to realize hey who has all the money the government who's the easiest to defeat the government who has all the open doors the government and as you know two days ago we arrested a team of doctors that were embezzling more than a billion dollars from Medicare sending out phony things for your back braces and arms of people who didn't even want it and so on but every year you go speak to them and you say look are you gonna put a dent in this I mean can you bring this down from a hundred billion to ninety billion because that's ten billion dollars we could go do something with instead when you go back to next year another hundred billion dollars that is absurd the wheel that to happen and as you know of course a lot of times that money leaves our economy because it's criminals committing these crimes against the federal government live in India they live in China they live in Russia but as always remind agents that money will come back money always does it'll leave but it'll boomerang and it will return to our economy of course it always returns in the form of drug trafficking human trafficking child pornography drugs so it's amazing that the American taxpayer lets billions of dollars being stolen from them only to come back and cause some bodily harm it's absolutely ridiculous but one of the things that I notice InfraGard I speak to a lot of InfraGard chapters because the agent that liaison asked me to come and speak so five years ago I thought it was very important that the FBI undertake along with InfraGard the education of young students who were in junior high school and high school about safely learning to use a computer with ethics and how to use it properly so we started a program at the Charlotte field office that's in its fifth year now we have about a hundred students who come every year it's a long long waiting list to come they spend a week there we do this in conjunction with our partner the InfraGard and Microsoft and basically we educate young children how to work on a computer how to learn to use a computer safely but mostly how to use a computer with an ethical behavior the government cannot fund that program nor nor could InfraGard so I fund it and that program is a program that is in its fifth year and I hope that we eventually get that program across the United States yes there had a question so that's that's wonderful information about the children that's a great program hopefully we'll see more of that coming along as far as the specific industries that you see being most affected by the other side the bad side the cyber criminals what what industries are getting hit the most obviously information you know we've have you've seen all the breaches we've had over a billion identity stolen so everyone in this room including myself has had their identity stolen that's a fact not a guess everyone has had their identity stolen we only have 340 million people in the country if we include babies and children so as I mentioned to you earlier I live in the state of South Carolina about four years ago someone hacked into our tax revenue office and stole 3.8 million tax returns of the citizens of South Carolina including myself now that meant they stole the entire physical return so they had my social security number your wife's social security number if you had children you listed as dependents that your children's social security number if you had paid your state taxes by check they had an image of your check so they knew where you banked what your account number was at the bank what the style check you used how you actually had the signature of the signature card at your bank what check number you were currently on and if you paid by debit card or credit card they had that information on the day of that event I was actually in the FBI field office in Phoenix so I got a call from our local TV station tracking me down because I've written three books on identity theft and they knew that I had been a victim so they wanted to ask me about it so I said to the reporter before he asked me let me ask you one quick question sure go ahead what did the state tax revenue office say about it they said they did absolutely nothing wrong that would be absolutely literally impossible every breach every breach occurs because somebody in that company did something they weren't supposed to do or somebody in that company failed to do something they were supposed to do hackers do not cause breaches people do all hackers do is wait for doors to open in the case of Equifax they fail to upgrade their system they fail to fix of patches sent to them by Microsoft they opened the door the hacker got in and after a Secret Service investigation in South Carolina it turned out an employee took back a laptop home that they weren't supposed to take home they opened it an unsecure environment and the hacker Guardian installed 3.8 million tax returns of the citizens of South Carolina always coming back to that human element our governor at the time was nikki Haley former ambassador to the UN she ordered that every citizen of the state be provided credit monitoring service from Experian and will be the state would pick up the tab at 12 million dollars so that everyone could have that service free paid by the state I didn't know the governor but I sent her an email from DC the next day telling her that would be a waste of the taxpayers money and a waste of the taxpayers time always remember that people who steal mass data warehouse that data typically three to four years before will ever surface so if I hack into Home Depot and target and steal credit cards and debit card numbers I have to get rid of that almost immediately because its shelf life is very very short but if I steal your name your social security number your date of birth you can't change your name you can't change your social security number you can't change your date of birth so the longer I hold on to it the more valuable it becomes and just this year we are starting to see some of those identity surface from a breach four years ago they will always hold on to it they already know that you're assuming and getting credit monitoring you're having a stay provided to corporations providing it they're gonna wait out that time because it will never lose its value or only go up in value as most people's earnings go up in value and their credit goes up in value the longer they hold it the more valuable it becomes any other questions yes sir so as far as do you think the solution is legislation or as far as just you mentioned education but I think as far as there's got to be some legal repercussions and legislators need to be able to make rules that help it I guess society having it more secure more able way of doing business there's a couple of things there obviously I tell young people if I was them today and I was 18 19 years old I'd be going out to learn about cybersecurity I wouldn't be going out to learn how to write code I'd be going out to learn about cybersecurity how to detect ransomware malware etc because that's where the future is the you have a career in cybersecurity that you'd probably say itself for their many many years ahead simple things in the government are nothing more than a matter of using technology to make a lot of that money go away for example a bank in New York like let's take I'll take JPMorgan Chase they spend about a half a billion dollars a year every year on technology half a billion dollars of their profit goes to purchase new technology every 12 months to protect the customers of their bank and the bank itself they could not stand to lose a hundred billion dollars they'd be broke the government doesn't do that private companies do take those investments because they have shareholders to answer true they have customers to answer to and of course they're trying to make a profit and keep their money safe so for example I said to the IRS when they wanted to do electronic payments I said I always look over these things they bring me and say we're gonna move and do this what's the flaws in it I spend most of my time now just looking for flaws so I'm working on a technology the government generated started about five years ago called true SONA TRUS ona that's to eliminate passwords I've written many articles that you know passwords passwords are for treehouses so obviously passwords passwords are 1964 technology that were developed when I was 16 years old and didn't even start doing the things I did I'm gonna be 71 in about 10 days and they're still using passwords it's probably one of the main reasons for all the issues that we have when it comes to cyber so when the government started that initiative for national intelligence to go to know passwords the government said we need to make sure there's no way to defeat it that it has to work it can't have flaws in it and that's what I do so I go out and review it and today we have Tru Sona and when did we accomplish that for the government I simply said to true Sona why don't you drop that from level 4 to level 2 security and give it to every consumer in America and let's eliminate passwords so you saw Serena Williams running through the mall in the tea advertisement she's excuse me running through the market she has just her running clothes on or phones in her hand she sees a necklace she wants to buy so she walks over to chase his ATM machine she takes out her phone presses the chase app on her phone she gets her money no password no card Delta has used no passwords we were there 80,000 employees for the last two years they will now bring it out to all their customers Aetna had used it to communicate with their doctors for two years they will bring it out to all of their and their insured customers it is going in to 14,000 ATMs at Bank of America 15,000 ATMs at Wells Fargo where you'll just go up take your phone out press your app when I call the call center at the bank they just say good afternoon mister having now they know it's me we do press the B of a app on your phone yes I did okay so how could I help you no security questions none now my purpose of that is I have five grandchildren the oldest is 16 the youngest is one I want the day to come very soon when they walk in the car dealership and go like to buy this car but I like to finance it for three years so what we do is we send your application out to a number of banks and those banks will review it and they give you the best rate okay so if you'll just press the app on your phone we'll be done I don't need to know your name I don't need to know your social security number I need to know your date of birth I don't even know where you live all that will be taken care of so that we have stopped giving away personal information for the next generation so they can keep their information more safe but when the government went to electronic payments I simply said to them are you going to wait for the w2 to match in other words if I send you a w-2 on January 5th and tell you that I earned this much money from XYZ company are you gonna wait to March 31st when that company actually sends the w-2 from them so that you can match the w-2s as we have in the past or are you going to pay so instead they went and paid so they pay within 1015 days they don't have a matching w2 and they've lost more than 65 billion dollars with people simply saying they made that much money and never matching it to verify that they in fact did make that much money they just made it up a very simple thing would happen tomorrow they say where - back to the old way where we didn't have these issues we didn't have these losses and we need to match the w-2 so if they have to wait another month to get their refund they'll have to wait another month but we need to is much more important to take this fraud out of our government that's what they don't do because no senator no congressman wants to step forward and say we need to change that rule we need to order the IRS to get a matching w-2 and then that's going to be accused of holding up someone's refine actually we did that in South Carolina because after that breach I worked with the state tax commissioner to make sure they never had a breach again but I also worked with him to change the way they make payments and refunds I told him if you have a suspicious refund you pay by cheque you don't pay electronically because you can track the check they have to receive the check so it has to be in a name they have to deposit in a bank where they've established their identity and you can always stop payment on the check so if a suspicious refund then you give yourself time to do something about it they've changed a lot of their rules on the state level we certainly could do it on a on a government level any other questions Frank we're gonna have to and I'm so sorry let's give him give him another hand please you [Applause]

Channel: NXTsoft

Views: 39,579

Rating: 4.8655462 out of 5

Keywords: frank abagnale, catch me if you can, conman, fraud, fbi, movie, real story

Id: kI22mWvQiic

Length: 60min 48sec (3648 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2019