This memoir is by a man considered by many police agencies to be one of the cleverest con men they had ever pursued. By the ageof 17, he was successfully impersonating a PanAm pilot, deadheading around the country and using fake identification to cash NSF
checks. He was almost caught in New Orleans, but convinced the FBI and local police that his credentials were authentic -- he had, after all, managed to pull the wool over experienced airline pilots -- but he was pretty lucky, too, because the PanAm offices happened to be closed for the weekend when he was nabbed, and the authorities couldn’t check with
their personnel office. One police officer said of Frank, “[He] could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it ‘you are hooked’ and pass it at any bank in town using a Hong Kong driver’s license for identification.”
Fleeing to Atlanta, where he shacked up with a stewardess -- he had flight attendant friends all over -- he then moved into a singles apartment building. Asked for his profession, he simply replied
“doctor,” more specifically, pediatrician. This resulted in a bizarre twist because another resident was a real pediatrician and they got to know each other. Before he knew it, Abagnale was asked to be the residents’ supervisor on the night shift for what he initially thought would only be two weeks but stretched into almost a year. How he managed to get away with it is both amusing — he couldn’t stand the sight of blood and once, when forced to walk by the emergency room as a bloody accident victim was being admitted, he had to go to the
bathroom to vomit — and frightening. He wasn’t even twenty at the time.
He blames his descent into delinquency on a 1952 Ford — that and girls. He couldn’t get enough of them, and to wine and dine them required
ever increasing amounts of money. Soon he had worked a scam on his father, using his gas credit card to get cash. He would go to a service
station and make a deal with the manager. They would charge a set of tires or battery or gas to the card, but, instead of delivering the product, the dealer would give Frank cash of about 60% the worth of the product and keep the product which could then be sold again for its actual value. The Mobil people finally called Frank’s father to ask
how his car could possibly require six sets of tires in less than a month and get far less than one mile per gallon, not to mention need several new batteries.
Soon, by making a detailed study of the banking system and the way checks were routed, he was forging all sorts of payroll checks, working through all the banks in a small town, dating the tellers along the way. One girl he helped in Las Vegas happened to be a check designer and, during the course of a pleasant meal, she explained how
presses were used to print checks. Frank then studied special cameras and presses, purchased one and soon had so much money stuffed in his
luggage he had no room for clothes.
Abagnale lived a sumptuous life — he says he went through several million dollars — on the lam, until the law caught up with him. The ending — no hints from me — is extremely unsatisfactory.
That he is recognized today as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play we learn only from the book blurbs. Assuming the
entire book is not a con, or even if it is, Abagnale is a charming rogue whose hilarious, stranger-than-fiction book is a delight to read or listen to.
