Frank Abagnale

 Frank Abagnale Jr.  - a man of a great social engineering talent, now known as an American security consultant, and he used to be known as an impostor and one of the best crime tricksters.

His first victim in social engineering field was his own dad; he needed money in order to spend it on women. He asked his dad to give him a credit card to fuel up his truck at a gas station. Then, he made a deal with gas station employees, so if he bought something there, they would add a certain amount of money to the total, give him the cash back and then he shared it with the gas station workers. He stole from his dad around $3400, as Abagnale Sr. learned it from his advisor. As it turned out, Frank destroyed all the bank statements that came to their house. 


After that, Frank started his criminal and full of tricks life. His first major crime was to forge bank checks. He was depositing money on his own accounts in many banks. And then he was withdrawing the money in cash. Before banks discovered the source of leakage of funds, Frank Abagnale stole more than $40,000.


Being a good actor, he impersonated a lot of fake identities. His favorite impersonation was a pilot for one of the largest companies in the United States  - Pan American Airlines, which involved a lot of benefits. He was just eighteen years old when he flew over 1,000,000 miles in more than 250 flights. As a teenager, he was already in 26 countries and was sleeping in hotels for free because he was an "employee” of Pan American Airlines, which provided free hotel rooms for their employees. As for the actual controlling of an aircraft, he managed to avoid this responsibility by simply referring to the prohibition of piloting an aircraft with a presence of alcohol in the blood stream.

Another identity that was impersonated by Frank Abagnale was a chief pediatrician at a hospital in Georgia, introducing himself as Frank Conners. The reason why he went to Georgia is that he was hiding from police, who nearly caught him during one of his flights. He was impersonating a doctor when he was getting a new apartment because he was afraid that the landlord would check the record in Pan American Airways in case he said that he was a pilot. After that he became friends with one of his neighbours who was actually a doctor. That is how Frank Abagnale found a job at the clinic.
  
Working in the Pan American under the name of Robert Blake, he said to one of the flight attendants that he had a diploma from Harvard University Faculty of Law. She introduced him to her friend, a lawyer, who invited Abagnale to take the Bar Exam to become a lawyer. In order to take the exam, Frank had to forge the diploma and study the law by himself. Even though he failed the test twice, he managed to find a job at the Louisiana Attorney General's office. He was just nineteen years old. He was working there for eight months. The reason for quiting that job was a real Harvard graduate, who was working there too could have easily exposed Abagnale.

Eventually, Frank Abagnale was caught in France. One of the employees of Air France told the police that he recognized him from the wanted ad since he had seen him before. In April 1971 in Virginia, Abagnale was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Due to the fact that he had agreed to cooperate with the FBI, he came out of prison after 4 years.
 
After spending 4 years in prison, Frank tried to find a job as a cook, grocer and even a projectionist. When he was applying for a new job, he never mentioned being in prison, but when the employers found out about it they immediately denied the job. As a result Abagnale decided to go with an unusual offer to the bank office. He spoke about his past and made the following deal: he shows and explains to the bank employees how to cheat and substitute documents, and he does not take anything if the presentation would be useless. If it proves useful information, the bank would pay 500 dollars and tell another banks about Frank Abagnale as a consultant. The tricks that he showed made such an impression that Abagnale soon became a legal advisor on security issues.
 
Right now Frank Abagnale is a millionaire and the head of the Abagnale & Associates, which consults companies from all over the world. According to their web site, more than 14000 companies are using Abagnale’s program for protection against fraud. His story was the inspiration for the film  Catch Me If You Can.