Frank Abagnale

Frank William Abagnale Jr. (born April 27, 1948) is an American security consultant, author, and convicted felon who committed frauds that mainly targeted individuals and small businesses.

Frank William Abagnale Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York City, on April 27, 1948, to a French-American mother who died in November, 2014, and an Italian-American father who died in March, 1972.

He spent his early life in Bronxville, New York.

His parents separated when he was 12 and divorced when he was 15 years old.

After the divorce, Abagnale moved with his father, and his new stepmother, to Mount Vernon, New York.

Abagnale claims his first victim was his father, who gave him a gasoline credit card and a truck, and was ultimately liable for a bill amounting to $3,400.

Abagnale was only 15 at the time.

In his autobiography, Abagnale says, because of this crime, he was sent to a reform school in Westchester County, New York (fitting the description of the Lincolndale Agricultural School) run by Catholic Charities USA.

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

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

Moreover, no alumni recall Abagnale ever attending the high school.

In December 1964, he enlisted in the United States Navy at the age of 16.

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

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

The following month, in March 1965, Abagnale identified himself as a Scarsdale, New York, police officer and entered the apartment of a Mount Vernon, New York, resident claiming that he was investigating her teenaged daughter.

Suspicious, the victim called the Mount Vernon police, who found Abagnale with a toy gun and a paper police badge.

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

The following day, Abagnale was ordered by the court to be committed to Grasslands psychiatric institute, in Westchester County, for observation.

In June 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Abagnale in Eureka, California, for car theft after he stole a Ford Mustang from one of his father's neighbors.

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

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

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

On July 2, 1965, this stolen-car case was transferred to the Southern District of New York.

After being released into the custody of his father to face the stolen-car charges, 17-year-old Abagnale decided to impersonate a pilot.

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

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

After serving only two years of his sentence, he was released into the custody of his mother, but he broke the terms of his parole with a stolen-car conviction in Boston, Massachusetts, and was returned to Great Meadow for one year.

After his release on December 24, 1968, 20-year-old Abagnale disguised himself as a TWA pilot and moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he talked his way into the house of a local music teacher, whose daughter was a Delta Air Lines stewardess he had met in New York.

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

The reverend introduced him to Louisiana State University faculty, who determined he was an "obvious phony".

He later gained notoriety in the late 1970s by claiming a diverse range of workplace frauds, many of which have since been placed in doubt.

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

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

He has also written four other books.

Abagnale runs Abagnale and Associates, a consulting firm.

Abagnale claims to have worked as an assistant state attorney general in the U.S. state of Louisiana, served as a hospital physician in Georgia, and impersonated a Pan American World Airways pilot who logged over two million air miles by deadheading.

The veracity of most of Abagnale's claims has been questioned, and ongoing inquiries continue to confirm that they were fabricated.

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

In 2020, journalist Alan C. Logan provided evidence he claims proves the majority of Abagnale's story was invented or at best exaggerated.

The public records obtained by Logan have since been independently verified by journalist Javier Leiva.