‘Catch Me If You Can’ conman Frank Abagnale Jr. lied about his lifetime of lies, sources claim

nypost.com:

Duped,” and a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio in full pilot regalia accompanied the piece. It was the famous still from “Catch Me if You Can,” Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film inspired by Abagnale’s best-selling memoir from 1980.Via email, the “reformed” con artist and author — who now advises businesses, banks, department stores and the FBI on fraud prevention and cybercrime — wanted me to know that it bothered him that “everyday someone writes an article about a bank robbery, forgery, con artist, or even cybercrime and they refer to me.“The crime I committed was writing bad checks,” he wrote. “I was 16 years old at the time.

I served five years total in prisons in Europe and the US Federal prison system. In 1974, after serving 4 years in federal prison, the government took me out of prison to work for the FBI.

I have done so now for more than 43 years.” He added that he had repaid all of his debts.His distress surprised me.Abagnale never seemed embarrassed by his past — not on “To Tell the Truth” nor “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” nor in high-paying speaking gigs around the country.His grifter-made-good story was a huge selling point.According to both Abagnale himself and his autobiography, in the mid-1960s and early ’70s, when he was between 16 and 21, he had impersonated a Pan Am pilot, flying some 3,000,000 miles to 82 countries for free.

He claimed to have posed as a doctor in Marietta, Georgia, a sociology professor at Utah’s Brigham Young University, and a lawyer in the attorney general’s office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.