2/10/2012

By MICHAEL STRAND

Salina Journal

The tale most people know about Frank Abag-nale is one of a happy-go-lucky teenager, loose on the world cashing millions of dollars in bad checks, cadging free airline flights and hotel rooms by posing as a pilot, and playing doctor with young single women.

And sure, that was part of the story he told Thursday night at the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting.

But it was the second part of his tale that left the audience silent.

Abagnale ran away from home at 16, fleeing an upstate New York courtroom, where a judge had just asked him which of his parents he wanted to live with after their divorce was finalized.

After arriving in New York City and altering his driver's license to say he was 26, he began writing checks, and friends said "I was the only person who could walk into a bank in mid-town Manhattan, walk up to someone behind a desk and get a check OK'd."

Pretend pilot

So when he'd drained his checking account, "I just kept writing checks." Not long after, he saw an airline flight crew coming out of a hotel, and decided to impersonate a pilot, knowing one perk of the career was being able to fly and stay in hotels around the world for free.

To get a uniform, he called Pan-Am, pretended a hotel dry-cleaners had lost his uniform, and got sent for a fitting at a uniform shop; all he had to do was put an employee number on a card.

Realizing he still needed a pilot's ID card, he turned to the Yellow Pages, and called an ID-printing company pretending to be an executive with a small airline that was wanting new cards. Once at the plant, he asked for a demo of the company's equipment, offering to allow them to take his photo for the sample card.

The card lacked the Pan-Am logo, which he resolved by buying a Pan-Am model kit and affixing one of the kit's Pan-Am logo decals to the card.

He later realized the hotels he was staying at on various airlines' tabs would cash his checks -- and later, that by posing as a pilot he could also cash checks at airline ticket counters.

"There were a lot of ticket counters at JFK (airport)," Abagnale said. "It would take me eight hours to work my way through them all -- and get a large amount of cash. After eight hours, what happens? Shift change, and I'd work my way back through."

He also impersonated a doctor, working as a supervisor in a hospital for several weeks, and as an attorney, working in the Louisiana Attorney General's office.

Time's up

He was eventually arrested in France at the age of 20 and served time in a French prison, where he lost 90 pounds before being extradited to Sweden, where he also served time on various charges before being shipped back to the U.S. for additional prison time.

His sentence was shortened after he agreed to work with the FBI for several years, helping them catch people pulling the same kinds of scams he'd done; he's now worked for the FBI for 36 years.

"I get a lot of emails at my office in D.C." from people who have seen the book or movie about his life, "Catch Me if You Can." "Many say I was brilliant, or a genius. I was neither. I was a child. If I'd been brilliant or a genius, I wouldn't have had to break the law to survive."

And while many people think his years-long crime spree was "glamorous," Abagnale said it was anything but.

"I cried myself to sleep every night until I was 19," he said. "It was a difficult, lonely life."

Even today, he said, he often sits up in the living room at night, the TV not on, because "there are things you can never forget."

For example, sitting in that French prison cell, looking forward to the day he'd see his father again -- not knowing his father had slipped on a subway step, hit his head and died.

"If you still have your mother, if you still have your father, give them a kiss and tell them you love them while you still can," he urged the audience. "Steven Spielberg made a wonderful movie ... but I've done nothing better in my life than be a good husband, a good father, and a good daddy."

-- Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by email at mstrand@salina.com.

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