Frank William Abagnale Jr.
Frank W. Abagnale Jr. was born April 27, 1948 in New Rochelle, New York. Born to a
French mother, Paula Abagnale and an American father, Frank W. Abagnale Sr. Frank Jr.
attended Iona Preparatory School, an all boys Catholic high school, ran by the Irish
Christian Brothers.
Frank Sr. owned a stationary store which later closed due to financial problems he was
faced with, due to Frank Jr.’s actions. Frank Jr. persuaded his father to lend him the Mobil gas
card for the new 1952 Ford that his dad gave Frank. With this card Frank Jr. would buy car parts
such as tires, batteries, and engines. With the purchases on paper only, the items would never
come off the shelves. Frank would make an agreement with the gas station attendants to sell the
items again and give Frank Jr. a percentage of the gained money and the attendant would keep the
rest. The gas station attendants never realized that the card was in Frank Sr.’s name and not
Frank Jr. He conned his father out of $3400 before anyone realized what he was doing. When the
local Mobil branch came to Frank Sr.’s store for payment and answers to how he could have
spent $3400 on gas, Frank jr. confessed that "it’s the girls that make me crazy." Frank Jr. did it
just for money for dates.
Frank Jr. started conning banks when he was 16 in 1964. Frank was confronted with his
parents divorce and the choice of which parent he was to stay with. During a court break Frank
ran away. It was the last time he ever saw his father, and he renewed contact with his mother after
seven years of separation. Frank also changed his birth year on his drivers licence to make
himself ten years older to get jobs.
He started by writing checks on an overdrawn account in his name. He knew the bank
would be demanding payment soon he changed his name when he discovered a different way to
con banks. he went into another bank and opened up another check account, but when the New
Accounts person came over to him and said "Here’s your temporary checks, and we’ll be mailing
you your printed checks in about ten days." But he was young and wanted it right then he asked
her about deposit slips. She replied by telling him "No they’ll be with your check print, and
they’ll be with your check book. But in the meantime, if you need to make a deposit just go over
to the table... take a blank deposit slip and write your account number in." When he left her he
went to the table and got a stack of blank slips and left. That night he didn’t sleep he just thought
about the slips. The next day he put his account number in all the slips and put them back in the
bank, so when customers would make a deposit it would go straight to Frank Jr.’s account and not
the customers. Frank Jr. made roughly 40,000 before the bank was able to positively match that
it was Frank doing it.
Frank impersonated a teacher by forging a Columbia University degree. He taught
sociology at Brigham Young University. He would read a chapter ahead of the students and
then teach it to them. He was there for one semester working as a teachers assistant.
He also impersonated a PAN AM pilot. For two years he would deadhead flying all round
the country and world. Deadheading is where the person flies for free to do a job for the company
at the place where that flight is going on short notice. Everything from food, hotels, tickets, and
the flight will be billed to PAN AM. Frank made a fake Id by posing as a business man claiming
to be buying the equipment to make Id’s for more employee’s PAN AM would be hiring. He
reports to have made a degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with name ‘Robert
Black..’ He obtained his uniform by calling the Pan American Airlines corporate headquarters
and asking for purchasing. He then claimed that he had flown in the night before and was
leaving New York in a few hours. And the hotel cleaners lost his uniform, and his spare was back
in his home town of San Francisco. The person on the phone told Frank to go down to the Well
Built Company on 5th avenue. They got him a new uniform and they told him they price was
$286 and he would have to pay. He said "let me write you a personal check." But they told him
no personal checks and no cash he would put in his employee number and PAN AM would take it
out of his next paycheck.. He became known as "The Skyway Man" and "The James Bond of the
Sky."
He next impersonated a pediatrician in a Georgia hospital. He made a fake degree and put
the name ‘Frank Williams’ After becoming friends with a real doctor he got a job at the Georgia
hospital and became the night supervisor. He decided to quit being a doctor after nearly letting a
baby die from oxygen deprivation, he did not know what the nurse meant when she told Frank
that there was a "blue baby."
His last impersonation was a lawyer. He forged a degree at Harvard University Law. He
passed the bar in Louisiana after failing twice, but in Louisiana at the time you could take the bar
as many times as you needed . Although he never was actually in the court room he did work at a
firm, but as a ‘gopher boy’ he simple got coffee, papers, and books for his employer.
He was eventually caught in France in 1969 when an Air France attendant recognized him
from a wanted poster. He was sent to the French prison, where he nearly died from starvation and
bad living conditions, for six months. Then he went to prison in the Sweden prison, where he had
almost luxurious living conditions, for six months. He was then sentenced to 12 years in the
United States prison, but he only served 5 years and was, and still is, working for the FBI. He
gives speeches on how to prevent bank frauds to the agents and to banks all round the world.
