Even when I was doing the things that I did, I I I paid back $2 million of that money because I hadn’t spent it.
And then I eventually paid the other half a million dollars back only cuz I felt it was right to pay all the money back.
Or he bear never repaid. I paid the money back so there really are isn’t anyone sitting there saying they’re out the money or that they lost money from this crime.
The Trinidad family, the Parks family, Jan Hillman never repaid. I repaid that half a million dollars though there was no court-ordered restitution in my sentence to do so.
September 11th, 1991, Frank Abagnale files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. $1.6 million in personal debts legally erased.
While giving speeches about paying everyone back. As many of you know, I had absolutely nothing to do with the movie.
I made no money from the movie. I was not involved in the movie. They put me in a cap and a big coat and put me in a night scene playing a French policeman who goes up to arrest Leo in one of the final scenes of the movie.
I’m going to show you about 40 years of lies. The receipts, they’re devastating. The victims, they’re real.
A lot of people say, “Yeah, but you know, you became a very famous thief before you were old enough to drink.
You were wanted in 26 foreign countries and 50 US states.” Well, yeah, I did a lot of things that got a lot of attention probably cuz they’d never been done before.
Frank wasn’t a genius, the guy isn’t charming, and he definitely was never reformed. Frank Abagnale, in my opinion, is a predator who figured out how to sell his story.
And I guess we all bought it. So, let me show you exactly what we paid for.
1970, Arizona State University. Frank’s in his Pan Am uniform setting up a table. He says he’s recruiting stewardesses for Pan Am and the line wraps around the building with attractive women.
Now, aviation student Paul Holsen watches Frank Abagnale interview every woman alone, one by one.
Holsen asks him, “I didn’t know the pilots did any of the recruiting.” And Frank’s response?
“Not only am I a pilot but a doctor as well. I do everything. The interviews and the physicals.”
Physicals for a flight attendant job. Now, Frank tells Holsen to call Pan Am headquarters in 3 weeks and he’ll have a job waiting for him.
3 weeks later, the FBI calls Paul Holsen. Frank, he had stolen the uniform, he had stolen credit cards, and never worked for Pan Am, and never was a doctor.
But they say he had examined every one of those women that day. One of the girls came over, I always gave them a thorough examination, sent them on their way.
I was young but not stupid. Now, Frank tells this story today at corporate events for about $30,000.
It’s his best material. When the girls came by, I always gave them a thorough examination.
The girls came by, I always gave them a thorough examination. When the girls came by, I always gave them a thorough examination, sent them on their way.
I was young but not stupid. But Frank wasn’t just targeting college kids. 1969, Frank’s wearing his pilot uniform taking a Delta flight for free, like always.
He sees flight attendant Paula Parks and becomes obsessed. Accused stated he met Paula Parks in Miami, Florida and followed up with her contacting her at her residence.
Now, that’s the police version of the story but here’s what actually happened. Now, Frank calls Delta Airlines, impersonates Paula’s manager, gets a hold of her flight schedule.
Frank then follows her across the country, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Miami, Florida trying to ask her out on a date, tracking her across the country.
Now, Paula’s polite, she keeps saying no but Frank keeps showing up with plastic flowers stolen from the local graveyard.
Now, while the flowers had no smell, Paula remembers one smell from Frank, the smell of fear, the stress hormones in his sweat.
So, we got a grown man following a woman state to state pretending to randomly bump into her.
A week later in New Orleans, Frank’s waiting at Paula’s home airport. He’s in his uniform and this time he’s got a convertible and he begs to drive her home.
Now, Paula’s exhausted and figures a pilot wouldn’t do anything weird. I mean, it’s the 1960s after all.
So, she takes the ride. In the car, she’s telling him straight up, “Stop following me.”
She wasn’t interested, this would never amount to anything. But when Frank meets Paula’s parents, he turns on the charm.
He says he’s a TWA co-pilot. He has a Cornell degree in social work and they’re sold.
Now, next week Paula’s flying and her mom calls. Frank had come by for dinner while Paula was out on the town and now he lives there.
In Paula’s childhood bedroom. Now, Paula’s parents are convinced Frank is just harmless and she tells him straight up, “Either Frank leaves or I don’t come home.”
They choose Frank. Frank infiltrates everything. He speaks at Paula’s brother’s high school. He gets a key to the house.
He’s even dating Paula’s cousin within weeks, taking the family to expensive dinners, buying them gifts, all with money Frank Abagnale was stealing from their family checkbook.
I wasn’t willing to steal some individuals’ money from them or their life savings but they were stealing an awful lot, $2.5 million, I believe it was in the end.
Right, and that was more of a game. From the arrest report, he admitted to making forged withdrawals from the young Parks’ savings account.
Imagine the man that followed you across the country living in your childhood bedroom. That’s insane.
Now, the Parks introduced Frank to Reverend Underwood to get him a job interview at LSU to work with children.
But when Frank can’t even answer the most basic questions about social work, they get suspicious.
They call Cornell. They’d never heard of Frank Abagnale. Reverend calls TWA and they actually know Frank this time but as a con man who was harassing stewardesses across the country.
The Reverend calls the police. Frank’s arrested and that’s when the Parks discover he had stolen everything.
Frank uses his one phone call from jail to ask the Parks family for bail money, the family whose life savings he had stolen.
Now, facing 12 years of hard labor in Angola prison, Frank puts on his next performance as a man in need of psychiatric help.
Now, Frank’s mom writes to the Reverend, “He seems to have a compulsion to write checks and is unable to stop.”
Frank writes to the Park family, “You have showed me more love in 6 weeks than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”
And while the Parks think this is just another one of Frank’s cons, the Reverend who had turned him in fights to get Frank this psychiatric treatment he was so begging for instead of prison.
And somehow the judge agrees. No Angola, just treatment. Frank’s life had literally been saved from a 12-year prison sentence.
All he had to do was just show up at the psychiatric hospital. August 1969, Frank flees the country.
And the Reverend who had saved him from Angola, the mother who had begged for mercy, the family who had showed him nothing but love, and Frank betrays them all.
But where did Frank go? Well, it’s not where you think. 1974, Camp Manison, Texas, kids’ summer camp.
A furloughed Delta pilot who loves helping kids shows up asking for a job. It’s Frank Abagnale, now almost 30, a next felon on parole with the receding hairline.
Now, the camp doesn’t have any pilot positions but Frank says he’ll take any job at a kids’ summer camp, which should have been a red flag right then and there.
It’s 1974, no background checks, they hire Frank on the spot as a bus driver.
Within days, Frank’s buying alcohol for the kids, flirting with 17-year-old girls, telling the kids that he actually wasn’t just a bus driver, he’s a secret management consultant.
Now, camp counselor Jan Jackson was suspicious of Frank and writes to her father and mentions this creepy bus driver claiming to be a furloughed Delta pilot.
Problem is, her dad is a Delta captain and he knows Delta didn’t furlough any pilots that year.
Jan’s father calls around Delta headquarters. Frank Abagnale? Never heard of the guy. But before the camp can act, they discover the vehicles are broken into, all of the camera equipment is gone missing, and Frank Abagnale is arrested for stealing from a kids’ summer camp.
So, we got the greatest con artist of all time as an almost 30-year-old man caught stealing cameras from kids.
Now, weeks later, the FBI shows up at counselor Morris’s house. Frank had just tried to flee the United States using a fake ID.
It was Morris’s Delta employee ID, a prototype card Frank had convinced him to make while at the camp.
But here’s the beautiful part. Now, Frank, who claims to be a master forger who made all of these documents, up the lamination so badly on the ID trying to change his last name that customs grabbed him immediately.
And Frank, well, he gave up Morris trying to save himself. So, we got an almost 30-year-old man on parole caught stealing cameras from kids trying to leave the country with a fake ID made by a kid.
You know, I have to smile because people always say you’re the greatest con man or the greatest confidence man.
His punishment though for all of this? Well, just pay back the camp and get a new parole officer.
That’s it. But Frank Abagnale hadn’t had enough children in his life just yet. Now, this is perfect.
Now, who is this? You guys have the wrong number. Here’s the thing though, that guy knew my name, my car, and hell even where I lived.
And here’s the scary part about it. This guy probably bought it for five bucks on one of those digital dossier websites to harass me and spam me.
See, there are hundreds of companies collecting your personal information, your phone number, where you live, where you shop at, and they’re selling it to literally anyone who pays up.
Now, here’s the scary part. Imagine an AI call that sounds exactly like your cousin using AI, and they’re calling asking for bail money, and they know enough personal details about your life to make it all seem real.
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1974, Frank calls his parole officer Jim Blackman. Frank’s got great news. He had just landed his dream job, the director of recreation at the local orphanage.
Here’s the thing though, Jim Blackman, the parole officer, used to work at that same exact orphanage, and he knew that that job required a master’s degree.
Blackman drops everything, drives down to Frank to figure out what the hell is even going on.
On the wall, Columbia University master’s degrees in social services. On his desk, pilot photos of Frank dressed up to the nines.
And that’s when Frank confesses to Jim Blackman. He wasn’t just the recreation director, he was actually placing the foster children into their homes.
Now, we don’t know what happened to those kids. We don’t know what homes he sent them to.
We don’t even know if his decision even ruined lives. All that we know is that Frank just couldn’t stop.
Blackman should have sent him back to prison. I mean, we got fake credentials, lying, we got kids.
But instead, much like Reverend Underwood, Blackman chooses forgiveness for Frank, and ordered him to leave the job quietly.
So, after being caught placing foster kids into homes with fake credentials, Jim Blackman just moves Frank into his garage to just keep a closer eye on him.
At 31, Frank Abagnale is debonair, rich, successful, and one of the most demanded speakers in the country.
Do you think he’s able to relate to young people like yourself? Yes, and I I guess I have a lot of feelings for him.
He gets up to $2,500 to speak for a couple of hours, but he goes to schools free.
So, that’s Frank with the children. Now, let’s look at those legendary crimes in the movie, the ones that have made Frank Abagnale so famous.
Turns out, he sucked at those too. And by the time I was 21, I had written about two and a half million dollars worth of bad checks.
Here’s the actual number, $1,400. Not a million, thousand. 10 fake Pan Am checks, all written out to mom and pop shops, all ending in a 16 cents for some reason.
Example, if I had truly walked into a dry cleaner, and that the mom and pop were in the back and went to get something, and the register drawer had been open, and there were cash in it, I would have never taken that cash, because I I looked at that as like stealing, and stealing from them.
But, I could justify walking in a bank by saying to myself, this is a bank that has billions of dollars, I’m going to write a $500 check.
Every single victim was a small business. But here’s the best part. Look at the name on all of the fake checks that he wrote.
It’s his real name. The mastermind who claimed to have fooled the FBI and Interpol for years used his actual legal name on every forged check.
The number that’s most often printed associated with you is eight different identities. Give me the identity.
Arrested as Frank Abagnale, booked as Frank Abagnale, because that’s the name on the goddamn checks.
Frank claims he was on the run for years. But to me, it was kind of very lonely, despairing life, constantly being on the run all the time for five years.
The reality, five days from warrant to arrest. Now, Frank claims that major newspapers covered his arrest.
They followed his every move, the New York Times. The New York Times, in a period of five years, wrote a syndicated column about me, which the New York Times referred to me as the Skywayman.
Here’s the actual coverage of it, page 34, next to an ad for canned sausage.
But I hear you. What about Europe? What about those years as this international criminal?
What did happen was that Frank saw European capitals in high style, a style that seemed to suit him.
Now, the story goes, Frank fled off to Europe, became this international criminal, lived like a James Bond villain.
A lot of people say, “Yeah, but you know, you became a very famous thief before you were old enough to drink.
You were wanted in 26 foreign countries and 50 US states.” Well, yeah, I did a lot of things that got a lot of attention, probably cuz they’d never been done before.
Here’s what actually happened. August 1969, Frank flees off to Europe after betraying Reverend Underwood.
He writes about $1,000 in bad checks. Frank steals a Fiat in France, drives up to Sweden.
He meets Jan Hillman, a Swedish mechanic. Now, Frank shows up in his pilot uniform, and right off of the bat, Hillman trusts him.
So, Hillman rents Frank a brand new Volvo, which Frank ends up stealing and drives back down to France.
So, Frank’s driving stolen cars across Europe, writing bad checks, running from the police, and he stops in the middle of all of this to speak at an elementary school as a real Pan Am pilot on career day.
Of course he does. So, after three weeks in Europe on the run, Frank’s arrested and sentenced to three months in Perpignan prison in France.
Now, Frank says he was arrested only one time in his life. I was actually arrested just once in my life when I was 21 years old by the French police.
Here’s arrest two through nine. The prison that I’m about to describe to you is done without the least bit of exaggeration.
The building was built in the 17th century, so there were no electricity, plumbing. I was placed in a cell that was exactly 5 ft by 5 ft by 5 ft.
I’m 6 ft tall. I spent six months there, went from 198 lb to 109 lb, caught double pneumonia, suffered vitamin deficiency.
Now, for 40 years, Frank tells this story of this horrific French prison. Now, remember this, we’ll come back to it.
Now, remember Jan Hillman, the mechanic who trusted Frank, let him borrow the Volvo? Now, Swedish court said Frank owed him $17,000.
But Jan Hillman, to this day, has not seen a nickel of it. And all of that money has been returned.
No one is out any money from those crimes. The only one I didn’t pay back was a hooker, because I felt the lesson was well worth the money, so I didn’t pay her.
And he’s just one of dozens of people Frank owes a ton of money to.
So, if Frank was this incompetent, how the did he become a millionaire? And that’s why a watch like this is so important to me.
Well, it’s very simple. Frank just rewrote history. I was the chief resident pediatrician of a Georgia hospital.
When I was 19, I passed the bar in Louisiana and practiced law. I flew more than a million miles for free.
Taught as a professor of sociology as a PhD. For 50 years, Frank’s told these stories.
Reporters tried to expose him. Nobody listened. Trapped in small town newspapers, buried in microfilm archives with no internet, no way to connect any of the dots.
So, Frank, he just kept talking until 2021. Alan Logan did what no other reporter could have done before.
He had collected every buried story, every forgotten exposé through the decades, and connected them all.
And all of those journalists’ work from the 1980s, oh boy, was it devastating. Let me show you what they found.
At the age of 18, I was the chief resident pediatrician of a Georgia hospital, where I practiced medicine for over a year.
I supervised seven interns on the midnight to 8 shift. Have you had any medical training?
No medical training. Reporter Ira Perry called the hospital that Frank worked at in 1978, and here’s what they said about Frank Abagnale.
We don’t have any interns or residents, never had. This always makes me laugh. This guy’s story gets better every time he tells it.
I uh would have been a gynecologist, but at 18, I didn’t know any better.
So, no licensing, no payroll, no records, nothing about Frank Abagnale. But at the time, Louisiana really didn’t require a law degree to be a lawyer.
Took the bar, passed the bar, and went to work for then Attorney General P.
F. Gremillion in the civil division of his state court, where I tried civil cases for the state for about a year.
Now, Frank told this story on Carson in 1978, and Louisiana attorneys immediately complained to the bar association.
Why? Because the district attorney Frank claimed to work for, Frank couldn’t even pronounce his name right.
So, the bar association went and verified by hand every person who had ever attempted to take the bar, passed the bar, and Frank Abagnale wasn’t on that list.
Pan Am says they estimate that between the ages of 16 and 18, I flew more than a million miles for free.
Flew more than a million miles for free. million miles for free. million miles a million miles million miles Pan Am says that their records show that I flew over 3 million miles between my 16th and 18th birthday.
It was three flights. Pan Am security director wrote about Frank in 1982 and said, “I am sorry not to have the time or the inclination to rebuke the same dribble this individual has been pedaling for years.”
Three flights, not 300. I went on to to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where I taught as a professor of sociology as a PhD.
Um wasn’t difficult. Read one chapter ahead of my students. They never knew the difference.
BYU’s response? We can find no trace that Frank Abagnale was ever associated with Brigham Young University.
And the picture that Frank uses to show that he was an actual professor at BYU, if you notice on the desk, there’s a can of Coke.
And that design of the can of Coke didn’t come out until 1977. So, Frank claims he was a doctor at 18 years old in 1966, a lawyer at 19 years old in 1967, and a professor at 20 years old in 1968.
So, there’s no reports, no evidence, no witnesses, nothing. Now, Frank claims the reason for this is that BYU, the hospital, the attorney’s office, they destroyed all of the records of his presence because they were so embarrassed by what he had done.
But one piece of evidence disproves this entire story. Frank Abagnale’s own inmate record card.
He was in jail this entire time. 50 years, thousands of speeches, millions of dollars made, all based on a resume that never existed.
And then Frank took this lie, wrapped it up, and sold it to Hollywood. It’s 1980, the book Catch Me If You Can hits the shelves, becomes a best seller within 3 weeks.
Now, Frank and Stan Redding, the co-writer, spent several 8-hour days writing this book together.
Now, Stan Redding was a respected police journalist at the time. And he had said he had seen file cabinets full of evidence from the FBI verifying all of Frank’s crimes.
Except there was no file cabinet, there was no evidence. Stan just took Frank at his word.
But when people started asking questions about the story, well, Frank now had the perfect scapegoat.
Frank would say Stan Redding wrote the book without ever talking to him. That’s them reviewing manuscripts together.
I guess Stan must have been a really quiet guy. Want to fact-check this story with Stan?
Well, he died about 40 years ago. And Frank’s been blaming a dead man ever since.
And that book that is full of lies was now about to become a Hollywood blockbuster.
It’s 2002, Catch Me If You Can hits the theaters, massive hit. You got Spielberg directing, DiCaprio starring, Frank’s story goes global.
And while at first Frank would brag about his involvement with these A-list celebs So, I went out literally spent about 3 days with with Leo at his home.
Constantly, he was following me around with a recorder. He was taking notes. I met with Frank who is quite an interesting person.
Obviously, I’ve enjoyed my experience of dealing with people like Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.
They have been wonderful to me, they have been wonderful to my children, they’ve been wonderful to my family.
Frank stated even got a cameo. They put me in a cap and a big coat and put me in a night scene playing a French policeman who goes up to arrest Leo in one of the final scenes of the movie.
But when people started to question the story’s accuracy, well, Spielberg would at least admit Well, all of the scams, meaning all of the the the impostor side of Frank Abagnale, all of his scams are all true.
Uh where you know, I took some license with Jeff Nathanson, the writer, dramatically. And the scams Spielberg thought were true?
Yeah, those never happened. And Frank tried to do his own damage control on his website in 2002 posting, “It has been reported that I had written $10 million in bad checks.”
The actual amount was $2.5 million. Number one, nobody ever said it was $10 million.
Frank invented critics to argue with. It was $1,400, not millions. He just makes it up.
And by 2006, Frank went completely nuclear stating I didn’t have a lot to do with the making of the movie.
Well, you know, it was amazing because I didn’t have a lot to do with the movie.
I had very little to do with the movie. The film. I didn’t have a lot to do with the movie.
Of you know, I had absolutely nothing to do with the movie. I made no money from the movie.
I was not involved in the movie. Frank’s literally in the movie. Scamming people is what makes it really amazing.
Now, Frank loves to quote Spielberg on why he made Catch Me If You Can.
And Frank’s version of the quote goes like this. Steven Spielberg made the movie. He loved the redemption story.
He said, “Well, I waited 20 years to see what the real Frank Abagnale did with his life before I immortalized him on film.”
Steven Spielberg did a wonderful job. He loved the redemption side of the story. He loved the redemption side of the story.
He really liked the part redemption Steven Spielberg has told me many times, “I made the movie about your life because I love the redemption side.”
But the actual quote? I committed to directing Catch Me If You Can principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard.
I mean, he’s literally rewriting Spielberg’s own words. I think deep down Frank knows that without these fake scams that are essentially his entire life story, Spielberg wouldn’t have touched this story with a 10-ft pole.
And Frank can’t deal with the fact that his whole life revolves around a fake fraud.
And he tries to use Spielberg to rewrite it as that it’s not about the cons, it’s actually about the redemption.
Which in my opinion, it’s like you can’t even quote people honestly about your own dishonesty.
But I guess old habits die hard. 1983, Frank’s charging thousands for speeches. Today, I do over 200 speaking engagements a year.
Frank W. Abagnale and Associates last year grossed over 10 and 1/2 million dollars. And after the speeches, fans line up one by one, and Frank, he spots his marks.
He offers them signed books and slips in his business card. Two days later, calls.
And she tells Frank she had loved the book. Frank knows she’s a mark. She’s bought into the story.
And pitches her the exclusive VIP investment of a lifetime. Just give him $20,000 and he’ll make you a ton of money.
She signs the check, Frank takes the money, and he goes off and runs. Jorge Bear, a doctor, another speaking event, another mark, another $20,000 for Frank.
Frank W. Abagnale and Associates last year grossed over 10 and 1/2 million dollars. $10 million in revenue like Frank’s claiming while hunting fans for $20,000 each.
But the next year, Frank’s investment program collapses and demands her money back. Dear, our deal fell through and I had lost a great deal of money.
I am dictating this letter to my secretary as I am still out of the country.
That same week, Frank was actually speaking in Louisiana and Tennessee. I own nothing. No real estate, no cars, no assets.
“I will pay you by March,” Frank says. “I actually have no money.” And then after years of giving this runaround to his VIP investors, September 11th, 1991, Frank files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
$1.6 million legally gone. Jorge never repaid. Never repaid. And these are just the ones willing to go public.
How many other doctors and bankers and executives don’t want to admit that they fell for it, that they got conned by a con man teaching about cons.
Um victims listed that there were no individuals that I ripped off for money. Nobody’s in personal money really isn’t anyone sitting there saying they’re out the money or they they lost money from this crime.
I mean, those victims, while they lost thousands, Frank’s next venture would take millions. Now, Frank ends every speech the same way.
Your identity has been stolen. Your credit cards are compromised. Hackers have everything. Everyone in this room is already had your identity stolen.
And then, when everyone’s terrified, he drops the solution. I look for a credit monitoring service.
There are hundreds of them. You have to vet those services. Some of them are actually Ponzi schemes, some are victimizing the victim.
Uh I use one called Privacy Guard. It’s the oldest and the largest, and I’ve used it since the early ’90s.
I do use a credit monitoring firm. I’ve used one since the ’90s called Privacy Guard.
Privacy Guard. Now, Frank claims he developed it. The guy who wrote 10 bad checks developed credit monitoring software.
You’ve heard it directly from Frank Abagnale. The best way to protect yourself from identity theft and take more control of your credit is with a credit monitoring service like Privacy Guard.
I’m sure, Frank. What is Privacy Guard? Well, in 2009, the Senate investigated them for what they called abusive marketing practices.
Click a discount online, you get enrolled in Privacy Guard without knowing, and you get charged monthly for years.
You can call that whatever you want. Now, they’ve had dozens of lawsuits over the last 20 years alleging RICO fraud, mail fraud, consumer fraud, wire fraud.
They’ve had to pay out over $45 million in settlements to consumers. Privacy Guard does two very important things.
It monitors your credit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that Privacy Guard that Frank promotes is sending credit scores to everyone, they were actually sending customers made-up numbers.
Fake credit scores. 20 years later, Frank still promotes this as the greatest thing he’s ever invented.
But speaking of made-up numbers, one of Frank’s favorite numbers, beside from the ones he’s just made up, is his IQ.
By the time I had reached the age of 16 and the 10th grade, an IQ of 140.
Yeah, that’s pretty high. I had an IQ of about 151. That doesn’t even make sense.
By the time I was 16, I had an IQ of about 140. Nothing was adding up.
And that’s the thing about Frank. He loves bragging about the numbers that live in his head.
The numbers that no one could ever fact-check. But that’s not the only thing Frank likes to make up.
Frank says he has 21 patents. I have developed technologies used by 78% of the banks in the world today, earned me millions of dollars in royalties and patents for those technologies.
There isn’t a single patent under Frank’s name at all. Frank sells pens. And so I developed what is known today as the Uni-ball 207.
He didn’t. He’s literally just a spokesperson. So even the pen you use can help.
To learn more, visit secureyoursignature. Frank says his signature is on every payroll check in the United States.
While he’s giving speeches at the Marriott in Toledo. I think it’s very important when I publicly go out and speak to tell people, you know, the real story as it is and what actually happened.
And But what is that real story? Well, researcher Alan Logan uncovered the truth in 2025.
This story has never been told before. Now, the family estate quiet about this for 50 years.
And Alan Logan spent time tracking down these victims that Frank never mentions. Trinidad, California, 1965.
A family run motel. Now, the owners have moved from LA so their two kids could grow up by the ocean.
Now, Frank shows up, says he’s a newly wed doctor heading to San Francisco for their honeymoon.
Now, the family of the motel throws them a wiener roast to celebrate. And that night, their 7-year-old gets sick with a nasty fever.
And Frank tells them, “I’m a doctor. Let me help.” Frank goes to his car, pulls out his medical bag, and begins performing a full physical on the 7-year-old boy.
After prodding and probing, he tells the parents, “Just give the kid aspirin.” And the parents were so thankful to be in Dr.
Abagnale’s hands. The next day, Frank pays by check and he leaves. The check bounces.
Days later, a truck shows up at the motel and delivers a brand new crib that Frank had bought for the family.
With another bad check. And that’s when the police informed the family that Frank wasn’t a doctor, but a 17-year-old con artist on the run.
And all of the checks he’d written, they had bounced. Frank was cosplaying as a doctor at 17 years old, diagnosing people.
Now, the father at the motel would have to pay everyone back, about $400 in 1965, about $3,500 today.
All from his own pocket. And 50 years later, the wife told Alan Logan, “Frank had never contacted us.
He never apologized. Never offered to pay restitution.” So we have the Trinidad family, the Parks family, Jen Helman, Jorge.
And these are just the ones willing to talk. How many others are out there too embarrassed to admit that they fell for Frank Abagnale?
The man who teaches you to not fall for Frank Abagnale. Of course, like any criminal, sooner or later you get caught.
Sooner or later you get caught. Like any criminal, sooner or later you get caught.
caught. You get caught. You get caught. Any criminal sooner or later is ready to get caught.
For 50 years, journalists have tried to crack Frank Abagnale. They present evidence, show contradictions, point out impossibilities in his story.
And Frank’s response was always the same. Deflect, deny, run. So for 6 years we evaded the the FBI pretending to be a pilot, a doctor, a professor.
But how were you able to do that if you were like sitting in prison the whole time?
All of these supposedly doing all these adventures over a period of a period of time not depicted in the movie.
Nothing to do. I didn’t write the book. I didn’t make the movie. I didn’t have anything to do with the play.
Now, Frank never cracked. Never admitted anything. Until 2024. Now, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal presses Frank on the facts of the story.
And for some reason this time, Frank cracks. Frank’s response, “I impersonated a doctor, but I did not actually work in a hospital.”
50 years of that lie. “I impersonated a lawyer, but I wasn’t an attorney. I did not pass the bar.”
50 years of that lie. “Standing took the French prisons, and they were bad, but he made them seem incredibly horrible.”
50 years of that lie. So Frank, in his mid-70s, finally admits the truth that journalists have been trying to say for decades.
But in a place where no one would ever see it. On someone’s Substack, behind a $7 a wall.
In an article with two comments. Even his honesty comes with an asterisk. Now, I know what some people are thinking.
“Well, Frank Abagnale still is the greatest con artist ever.” The story itself was the con.
That’s what Frank wants you to think. If the con is the story, well, that means there’s no real victims.
The story never happened. We don’t have to think about Paula Parks, the Trinidad family, Jorge.
We don’t have to wonder why he won’t pay any of these people back or hell, even apologize.
Or why he’s still lying to this day. This isn’t just a story about a fake tale.
It’s a story about real people who are still waiting for Frank Abagnale to do the one thing he always claimed that he did.
Change. But having found he couldn’t live down his notorious reputation, he found a way to live with it.
He’s retired, but not reformed. A con artist is part of one’s personality. It’s the only honest thing Frank Abagnale ever said.
