The thing is is we can never know what he did and what he didn't. Because he does work for the FBI and was at least confident enough to be a good enough confidence man to get into the FBI. Who knows what they could have changed about his backstory. The FBI can pretty easily changed some of these past. Or maybe he just pooping lies like 50 times a day I don't know
I think a bigger and better con is tricking the world into thinking you're a conman, to the point you make a best selling book, have a movie made about you, talk at the FBI, and end up with a probably very comfortably paid job. Not trusting a liar is rule number one.
Much of these I learned a few years ago when I began working as a fraud analyst and financial crime investigator. Among my team, there was discussion about contracting Frank Abagnale for a speaking engagement. I suggested that, before we do that, we should investigate him like we would any other case first, and most of the evidence that you read off is readily available from a basic OSInt investigation.
I worked as a security guard for many years and found that people don't actually expect you to do our job as security, even most of the people you actually work for. I took my job very seriously (because there were dangerous chemicals and explosive materials on-site and I also didn't want to die by letting someone in who shouldn't be there just because some company idiot didn't want to be late for his coffee brunch because I was slowing things down by following proper protocol and checking everyone's credentials before letting them enter the site) and found out very quickly that it's a thankless job and people will hate you for doing it properly. This is the main reason why it's so easy to just walk in or talk your way into buildings and installations that aren't government-ran (and even some that are), because private security gets harassed into not properly doing their jobs. People like this guy know that and can take full advantage of it. So many people in these companies value expedience over actual security and won't bother properly checking someone out, so it's easy to just BS your way through.
@@Kas_Styles I have but they usually want you to also have site safety and security management experience or law enforcement/military experience and I don't have any of that. I was just basic unarmed (yeah, really) contracted security for a couple of companies that really only wanted security to appease their insurance providers and state agencies that required it. I found out early on that there are so many companies like that who only have that kind of security because they have to and would totally take the risk of doing without it if they didn't, because they see it as an unnecessary expenditure. These same companies will waste thousands of dollars on any other number of stupid things but security... Meh, we don't REALLY need that do we?
@upinarms79 ya. That's why I want to work for a cybersecurity company that actually cares about security and not just for insurance. I would love to be risk assessment for Harry Styles from One Direction but idk if the general entertainment industry even cares about that sort of thing. They really should because the fandom has always been really good at research and finding things.
@@Kas_Styles A lot of companies aren't much better about cyber security either, but since the mid 2000s when so many lost tons of money and faced lawsuits because they were frivolous with customers' personal info and took heavy loses and downtime due to almost non-existent internal network security, they've had it drilled into their heads that it has to be a thing, even if they don't understand or care why that is. Some now have gotten their crap together and understand the importance, but some still just don't care until it threatens their bottom lines. It might sound like I'm just being cynical but if most people really understood how grossly insecure some of these companies are with their personal data, they'd never do business with them. It's gotten better but there are still so many that just either don't care or can't see it as something that should require so much money and attention.
The comedian Randy Feltface once told a story about buying a bookshelf off gumtree(aussie ebay), but at the end of it said the whole thing was made up. Then he talked about how nobody wanted to believe him and it feels really bad to belive we've been lied to. If you get tricked by a good enough story then you won't believe its not real Edit: That ducktales reference hit a little too hard
Frank makes a living by selling books, giving lectures, and actively trying to sell ideas on how to make checks/banking more "fraud proof." All of the things he does depend on his "experience" (tall tales) to springboard him... If they're all false, nobody will buy what he's selling. That's why he can't give up on his lies.
There’s a quote from an old Sherlock Holmes tv show that is very applicable to any lie ever told. “Human beings lie to gain, to conceal, and to protect.”
The reason it feels so wrong is because in the movie and in his own tale of events. After he gave up his life of crime, he decided to be an honest man. No more lies. If he's still lying about his frauds then he's still living a fraudulent life. He's not really reformed, he's not living up to that promise he supposedly made to himself and that's saddening man
I treat Catch Me If You Can as fiction and its still enjoyable. Also, it is true that Washington, Vermont, California and Virginia do NOT require you to go to law school to take the bar exam.
Yes you can pass what is called the ‘Baby Bar’ in these states. These generally allow people who have worked in law firms for several years to prove that their work experience has presented significant enough expertise on par with a formal degree. If you pass the “baby bar” exam, you may then apply to take the bar exam like anyone with a JD degree.
If I'm honest looking the part is half of australian culture, the amount of places you can go wearing a tradie uniform is terrifiying, walk onto a job site and no one bats an eye
I watched him speak at a conference (on TH-cam) and he does admit the lengths were exaggerated by others and he doesn't get royalties. But in general I believe he possibly did the things at least once to see if he could, possibly going to jail because of them., But then he's also one of the original social engineers so either way he did well.
He’s also said in various speeches and interviews that the book and film were mostly very accurate to his actual life. Which as we now know is total BS. The man’s a habitual liar, even recently he’s appeared in an advert for a luxurious watch company where he tells the same silly lies about being a doctor/lawyer/pilot etc. He doesn’t need any royalties directly from the movie as his income is from speaking tours. moronic companies pay him 20-30k a time to tell the same fictional story. He didn’t do the things at least once either btw. A few investigative journalists have pieced his life together during that timeframe and it’s pretty pathetic. At 16 he was briefly in the navy but dropped out, 17-20 he was in prison for petty theft and vagrancy. Aged 21 he did briefly pose as a co pilot for about a month. This was in order to stalk an air stewardess called Paula Parks. He then stole from Paula’s family and several members of the local community. Was promptly rearrested . Not long after he stole from a kids summer camp , again rearrested and sued by the proprietors. He then bankrupt his ex partner by taking out various credit cards and loans in her name. You should read Alan Logan’s book or listen to the Pretend podcast. Both tell the real story
@@Asht-mj4wy Ngl when he dropped that "joke" he made about scamming a sex worker out of $2,000 that threw up a red flag to me that this whole narrative of only "sticking it to the man" and never the little guys miiiight be bullshit
@@historicalaccuracy15 yeah good spot. He’s so narcissistic his lies have eventually caught up with him. That story about the sex worker was actually stolen. Early on in his speaking tours he appeared at some type of banking convention and stayed back to converse with the guests after, one of the bank employees told a similar story which he clearly found funny enough to steal and pretend its his own. More worryingly in recent years there’s been reports from women he interacted with during his youth that whilst dressing in a pilot uniform he’s insisted that he was also medically trained so carried out private medical inspections on young children. This was around the time his mother suggested putting him into psychological care. All quite disturbing
@@Asht-mj4wy Holy crap that's terrible... If you can remember a good source to point me and anyone else towards please by all means do. I gotta say I do kinda empathize with Bryan here. It reminds me of that time I found out one of the two major founders of the chaotic parody religion of Discordianism went down a bad path after becoming paranoid schizophrenic, actually genuinely believing in utterly unhinged connections and lines of thinking and long story short he er, wound up apparently doing something similar... As if the mass amount of alt-right meme lords coopting it for the polar opposite of what it was founded on wasn't bad enough.... I guess that saying, never meet your heroes really rings true huh don't it?
@@historicalaccuracy15 two best sources would be Alan C Logan’s brilliant book from 2021 caller “The Greatest Hoax, catching truth while we can”. If you prefer audio format then Javier Leiva did a superb 12 episode deep dive into the truth on his podcast called “Pretend”. It included interviews with his victims, the FBI, public records and he even confronts Abagnale at one of his speaking engagements.
As we understand it: his legal status is resolved, and for decades he's worked against fraud. (That's all good. We like that. Hooray, Frank!) Separately, it appears that the narrative that put him on the map is a fib. (we're... sympathetic to that. We like our scoundrels. To a point.). But now, 50 years after his initial origin story, it appears (from what we've read) that neither is his origin story true, nor has he walked it back in any public forum... and (most vexing), it looks an awful lot like when he was young he wasn't taking on the big guy... it looks an awful lot like he was doing petty crimes. (again: we'd be sympathetic to people who do that, but...) Here's the complicated space we're exploring now: this is a wonderful narrative. And there seems to be no doubt he's now in the business of being a responsible citizen... But how do we, as rogues, wrestle with the idea that one of our heroes appears to have his career not just launched on a fib, but a fib that is 100% opposite from the narrative we've been fed? If he was defrauding poor people, how do we feel about his false narrative of taking on the man? Maybe there's more to the story. We'll find out. I, certainly, was suuuuuuper disappointed to find out that I appear to have been duped. -Brian
Per the FBI, Abagnale & Associates is a legitimate fraud prevention consulting company on a list of agencies allowed to be used by federal agencies. Abagnale did found the firm and hire many fraud experts. He also actively worked to promote their services for several years. He has given talks a few times at FBI training events. But there are no records of him actually working for the FBI. Although it is possible his firm was consulted on individual local cases or consulted by businesses owners in cases that the FBI was also investigating. Per his arrest accounts, the FBI says he was on a list and there were agents at a time that may have looked into one of the crimes. This is because before detailed computer tracking, agents generally followed and looked into cases in their assigned regions on their own authority. Case files were distributed widely and could possible local leads could be followed and examined by any number of agents. There was however no special agents assigned, no formal investigation, no international manhunt, and no task force. His extradition was generally just a normal case of judicial paperwork, routine for international criminals who violate release conditions in other cooperating nations. Many investigators and people who did attend his talk also indicated that there were general issues with the details he presented on the procedures of fraud investigation. Some of the information being completely wrong. When they looked into the matter it was generally that Frank’s talks were an general advocate of fraud detection giving importance to the field, and to name drop his firm where possible. He was not actually heavily involved in the fraud detection aspects of his business, and was mostly just doing sales work. It is most likely that he invented most of these tails while in jail/prisons to tell other inmates in order to seem more significant of a criminal. As he spent most of his time in custody he had ample time to refine telling stories over and over. When contacted years after the movie came out about the alleged fraud he mostly says that the movies, stores, investigations, etc bring him great mental stress and hardship. He wishes none of them ever existed. He doesn’t like to talk about them and just wishes to enjoy his retirement in peace and anonymity.
@@ModernRogue That "joke" story about scamming some sex worker out of $2k felt like a red flag about him tbh, doesn't exactly sound like going after the big guys to me
I was impressed by Brian's ability to lie about being surprised about Frank's lying about his lies. I was shocked by Brian calling out Jason's lie about doing math. Impressive.
For a real imposter, you might investigate Ferdinand W. Demara (whose story is told in the book The Great Imposter and the movie of the same name starring Tony Curtis), who looks like the inspiration for 'Catch Me If You Can'.
what gets me is that he ended up fashioning himself as a cyber security expert yet, when i watch his talks, he is telling people things that i told my clients (for free) 20 years ago his cyber security talks are just him giving over info that can be found on the net no one questions how a guy who simply passed bad checks became a cyber security maven....with zero education...they just accept what he says additionally, no one ever questioned his story....despite the fact that every time he tells it....he tells it exactly the same....using the exact same words and cadence it's clearly memorized ask any cop what they think when they ask suspects for their alibis if they tell the exact same story, with no changing how they tell it....using the exact same wording....what they think the cop knows the story has been memorized and is probably a lie
Clean white hat, clean workboots golf shirt, chinos and a clipboard get you in the back door of any warehouse or construction site and if anyone stops you, ask for Frank, there's usually a Frank and many times he's the supervisor, then tell Frank Tony asked you to come in.
Once I bought a plane ticket for a friend with the name I knew her by: Jan. But the name on her driver's license was Janice. We had to argue for an hour before the airline would let us board. Believing that someone could just walk on board a plane was such a wonderful fantasy. It's disappointing to find out that never happened.
In the end, the book and movie are entertainment and lessons can be learned from them (including not always trust the author's story). I know I can say I've used confidence to gain jobs (legally and honestly, I'm not george santos), I'm more skeptical about if people are actually who they are, and became a lawyer in Louisiana without going to law school.
The problem with Abagnale's current career is that he holds himself out as a former master forger, and he can teach you the tricks to spot the cleverest forgeries. The fact that he was constantly caught, everywhere he went, shows he was not a master criminal and does not have the experience to teach those lessons. He is still just pretending. I think Kevin Mitnick's story is similarly exaggerated.
😔 wish i didn't see this video even if it was all a lie frank wasn't great person but his fake story gave me the confidence to be who i wanted to be (not fake it but just the confidence of him is what i'm on about so to know this now kinda hurts)
It all depends on whether or not you feel bad about someone telling you a story. You might be disappointed about 'Catch me if you can' not being true, but did you enjoy what happens in 'The Usual Suspects'?
No one would have a problem with him telling a fictional story . The issue lies with him being put on a pedestal as some type of reformed hero. there’s many living victims who still haven’t been paid back. Then there’s others who were sexually assaulted by him.
Hmm, it sucks to see the truth being more that he was a scummy person. But thinking on it objectively, in chalking it down to " I enjoyed the story and movie. Even if I don't like what this author did. " Kind of like how people dislike Rowling because of the views she has. Good story still good, but I'm not gonna be friends with the guy or make him godfather of my children. That being said, doesn't excuse the lie and his hands are certainly not clean of this . I would never trust a word this guy ever said again .
At 4:01 there was no conversion of currency to other nations money. What the hell? You can't just dangle $1000 USD in front of us and not tell us how many Naira or Rupees or Pounds that is. That's the whole point. I mean I'll still watch Modern Rogue but honestly, it's gonna be tough to get past this indiscretion.
When someone hurts a major corporation who do you think really pays the price? The little guy,.. simply because they're going to transfer the cost of the losses they just got hit with to the consumer. That or they're going to start taking money out of their employees' benefits in the form of agreed-upon bonuses that will not be paid now. So con artists really aren't all that cool now, are they...
So the lie he told that was the worst and throwing you off is the age in which he committed most the things. He got the pan am uniform at 24, so his real story is closer than these guys give him credit for. But it begins way later than he stated originally.
I know you laughed at the pilot part but my dad in the early 70's got his pilot license at 15 because there wasnt a requirment " be x age". If you had the money and could complete the training they didnt care what age you were
Frank Dux claimed to win a martial arts tournament that when you did the math would have over 27 quadrillion participants based on his description of the rules
It's weird. He got caught all the time, but working for gov is true. So either he was cutting edge knew people and an idiot (still gets the job). Or a genius with bad luck. So catch me if you can 2 will be howI lied my way into a gov job and avoided more prison.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if most of it was true. I once was in an ER and just started ordering people around and as long as I seemed confident the staff would just go along with everything. Meanwhile, I'm spread eagle with my junk facing the world being operated on. It was truly eye opening how easily people can be manipulated. I was doing it for good reason, I was suffering like crazy because apparently I can breakdown ketamine faster than Superman despite having no opioid history, but I couldn't believe how well it worked.
Very interesting. So despite being in a vulnerable position physically, your verbal confidence is what made them listen. Hope you're better and that there was no lasting damage to your health.
Frank let me down- the first hint that I figured that he might not be telling the whole truth is that his life story never changed- no matter where he spoke, it was the same well rehearsed story....no variation on it, just the same life story over and over again. I think the man had to add things to a somewhat boring criminal life and I have known folk (mostly men) who tell tall tales about what they done and accomplished and none of it was true. I think Frank is doing good on telling folks how to not get scammed, but he sure did let me down, I wanted to believe he did all these remarkable things.
This is similar the guy who made Family Romance (Japanese "rental family service"). The guy's an actor and primarily manages talent(for stuff like commercials etc), yes there might have been some "rent a family" situations for gatherings or one off novelty meetings, but most of his outlandish stories about acting secretly as a fake father to a girl for 10 years etc., and being a hired father to hundreds or thousands of children seem to have been proven false and simply a marketing campaign for his business. But of course everyone believed a good -ACTOR-... Fascinatingly, Werner Herzog who is also famous for these kinds of shenanigans made the movie Family Romance LLC, a fictionalized version of his accounts with the actual guy playing himself.
You know, I have to say that the story of Frank both disappoints me beyond my core, yet makes me whole beyond belief. His story, the way he tells it, the movie, everything is just ..... SO GOOD... to learn it was all, and I mean literally ALL was just a con... It breaks me at my core. Disappointed beyond belief, yet, at the same time I find it STRANGELY SATISFYING..... Maybe Frank REALLY IS the *greatest con of them all????*
Hahaha I read the Frank Abagnale Wikipedia just a while back and found out that his whole story is just another layer of lies, it cracked me up learning that. 3d-chess level of a con, a con about being a con.
Abagnale started putting out "evidence" that conflicts with his stories and paints him as a scumbag intentionally to make it seem harder to weasel your way into easy money to would-be conmen
What is the difference between FA and George Santos? I respectfully disagree with “he was ripping off the big guy” thought. When it really comes down to it, ripping anyone off above you or below you is being a sucky person.
Don't forget that much of what Jasper Maskeline was supposed to have done would have been "top secret" and records either never released or perhaps destroyed, just like the official admission that Enigma was broken by the British at Bletchly Park didn't happen until the late 1980s, when some of the former staff gave interviews about their wartime experiences.
True, but this isn't top secret stuff, nobody is making a multi-decade air-tight cover legend for this guy with no real valuable skills or experience beyond petty crime and then letting him blare it out to the whole world and become famous on it. And that's aside from the fact that he was verifiably in jail for a lot of these supposed cons he pulled, a number of them are trivially debunked as impossible. Like, all of his stories about the airlines are trivially debunked by the fact that even then, they had flight manifests, and unauthorized deadheading wasn't really a thing because they were in(or just after) a period of time where planes were already getting hijacked at the rate of about two a week, so everybody would have been pretty wary of some rando showing up in a not-quite-right pilot's uniform(In an industry where even in the 70s, the uniform standards are INSANELY strict) and claiming they wanted to deadhead a flight.
@@Churbas These are two totally different situations, one was done by a government agent under top-secret classification during wartime, the other a con-man who created a mostly fake back-story at a time when it really wasn't as simple as googling records to find out that prison and court records prove that it was all essentially lies. Decades later, the creation of the internet and digitisation of records kind-of blows the lid off "Catch Me If You Can".
You know, I think that the tales of Frank Abegnale just might be... the World's... Greatest... Con...
2nd to Donald stealing the 2016 election!
The thing is is we can never know what he did and what he didn't. Because he does work for the FBI and was at least confident enough to be a good enough confidence man to get into the FBI. Who knows what they could have changed about his backstory. The FBI can pretty easily changed some of these past. Or maybe he just pooping lies like 50 times a day I don't know
I heard he and Frank Dux proof read each other's biographies..
@@johnantonopoulous6381 He does not work for the FBI. He made that up too lol
@@rockl.1361 I just watched Wag the dog, and my paranoid brain says that that is what the FBI would say after the book came out 😬
I think a bigger and better con is tricking the world into thinking you're a conman, to the point you make a best selling book, have a movie made about you, talk at the FBI, and end up with a probably very comfortably paid job. Not trusting a liar is rule number one.
He had made MILLIONS off of the books, movie, and speaking fees alone. He legitimately worked for the FBI Fraud Division.
He never worked for or with or next to the FBI.
@@busterbiloxi3833 Pretending to know anything for sure about this guy is equally a con xD . Comment literally only claims "talk at the FBI"
Lying about lying while being a liar making people thinking he's not lying is a pretty good liar.
True
Much of these I learned a few years ago when I began working as a fraud analyst and financial crime investigator. Among my team, there was discussion about contracting Frank Abagnale for a speaking engagement. I suggested that, before we do that, we should investigate him like we would any other case first, and most of the evidence that you read off is readily available from a basic OSInt investigation.
Shout out to osint investigation!!!
Love research and love osint!
Do you work at a PD or private firm?
Did you crowd sourced that OSInt?
If Frank didn't really do it all, that just means someone else can... have fun Brian!
I worked as a security guard for many years and found that people don't actually expect you to do our job as security, even most of the people you actually work for. I took my job very seriously (because there were dangerous chemicals and explosive materials on-site and I also didn't want to die by letting someone in who shouldn't be there just because some company idiot didn't want to be late for his coffee brunch because I was slowing things down by following proper protocol and checking everyone's credentials before letting them enter the site) and found out very quickly that it's a thankless job and people will hate you for doing it properly. This is the main reason why it's so easy to just walk in or talk your way into buildings and installations that aren't government-ran (and even some that are), because private security gets harassed into not properly doing their jobs. People like this guy know that and can take full advantage of it. So many people in these companies value expedience over actual security and won't bother properly checking someone out, so it's easy to just BS your way through.
Have you heard of the job Physical pentester?
@@Kas_Styles I have but they usually want you to also have site safety and security management experience or law enforcement/military experience and I don't have any of that. I was just basic unarmed (yeah, really) contracted security for a couple of companies that really only wanted security to appease their insurance providers and state agencies that required it. I found out early on that there are so many companies like that who only have that kind of security because they have to and would totally take the risk of doing without it if they didn't, because they see it as an unnecessary expenditure. These same companies will waste thousands of dollars on any other number of stupid things but security... Meh, we don't REALLY need that do we?
@upinarms79 ya. That's why I want to work for a cybersecurity company that actually cares about security and not just for insurance. I would love to be risk assessment for Harry Styles from One Direction but idk if the general entertainment industry even cares about that sort of thing. They really should because the fandom has always been really good at research and finding things.
@@Kas_Styles A lot of companies aren't much better about cyber security either, but since the mid 2000s when so many lost tons of money and faced lawsuits because they were frivolous with customers' personal info and took heavy loses and downtime due to almost non-existent internal network security, they've had it drilled into their heads that it has to be a thing, even if they don't understand or care why that is. Some now have gotten their crap together and understand the importance, but some still just don't care until it threatens their bottom lines. It might sound like I'm just being cynical but if most people really understood how grossly insecure some of these companies are with their personal data, they'd never do business with them. It's gotten better but there are still so many that just either don't care or can't see it as something that should require so much money and attention.
@upinarms79 ya I know how bad it is. Companies really just don't give a shit and it's really sad.
I remember Brian always saying Frank Abagnale was his hero and stuff, so this is honestly kinda disheartening.
You can visibly see me processing.
The comedian Randy Feltface once told a story about buying a bookshelf off gumtree(aussie ebay), but at the end of it said the whole thing was made up. Then he talked about how nobody wanted to believe him and it feels really bad to belive we've been lied to. If you get tricked by a good enough story then you won't believe its not real
Edit: That ducktales reference hit a little too hard
I read the edit right at the reference
MORGAN NOOOOOO
@@shadowessence4782 words you can hear 😂
MORGAN!……MORGAN!!!!!!………………MOOOORGANNNN!!!!!!!!!!!……….*thud-thud-thud,crash,shatter,thud*
I still feel for Morgan
Frank makes a living by selling books, giving lectures, and actively trying to sell ideas on how to make checks/banking more "fraud proof." All of the things he does depend on his "experience" (tall tales) to springboard him... If they're all false, nobody will buy what he's selling.
That's why he can't give up on his lies.
Sounds like the "Catch me if you Can" guy was actually... Caught quite a lot. Like most of the time captured.
There’s a quote from an old Sherlock Holmes tv show that is very applicable to any lie ever told. “Human beings lie to gain, to conceal, and to protect.”
Watching Brian slowly unravel was quite interesting.
I'm with Brian. This hurts so much to know he is liar. Want to think someone actually did it but its sad. 😢
A notorious conman lied about being a notorious conman. You just can't trust anybody these days...
Lying about lying about being a liar is a damn pretty good liar to make people think your not a liar. (Edit: while lying (maybe?)
For me it just confirms that he was a lying scumbag all along, just a slightly different lying scumbag.
To find out that he was honest and dishonest about lying at the same time upsets me.
We need a Frank Dux vs Frank Abagnale boxing match, winner gets to keep their pretend legacy.
His niece said in an interview that he is a pathological liar.
I’m jazzed that new articles are on the site!
Thank you for this episode. I was at first convinced by the story and it was disappointing to realise that most of it was lies.
The reason it feels so wrong is because in the movie and in his own tale of events. After he gave up his life of crime, he decided to be an honest man. No more lies. If he's still lying about his frauds then he's still living a fraudulent life. He's not really reformed, he's not living up to that promise he supposedly made to himself and that's saddening man
I treat Catch Me If You Can as fiction and its still enjoyable.
Also, it is true that Washington, Vermont, California and Virginia do NOT require you to go to law school to take the bar exam.
Yes you can pass what is called the ‘Baby Bar’ in these states. These generally allow people who have worked in law firms for several years to prove that their work experience has presented significant enough expertise on par with a formal degree. If you pass the “baby bar” exam, you may then apply to take the bar exam like anyone with a JD degree.
Oklahoma has a law school work around also
Massachusetts you can take your bar exam without law school.
Oh, I know. We are all public defenders.
If I'm honest looking the part is half of australian culture, the amount of places you can go wearing a tradie uniform is terrifiying, walk onto a job site and no one bats an eye
Happy we’re getting more MR Articles Digest episodes, I’ve always enjoyed listening to them like mini podcast!
Brian realizing he had been coned and us right along with him...
And that's when you find out he hacked various police databases to make it appear he was imprisoned at times he wasn't?
I watched him speak at a conference (on TH-cam) and he does admit the lengths were exaggerated by others and he doesn't get royalties.
But in general I believe he possibly did the things at least once to see if he could, possibly going to jail because of them., But then he's also one of the original social engineers so either way he did well.
He’s also said in various speeches and interviews that the book and film were mostly very accurate to his actual life.
Which as we now know is total BS.
The man’s a habitual liar, even recently he’s appeared in an advert for a luxurious watch company where he tells the same silly lies about being a doctor/lawyer/pilot etc.
He doesn’t need any royalties directly from the movie as his income is from speaking tours. moronic companies pay him 20-30k a time to tell the same fictional story.
He didn’t do the things at least once either btw. A few investigative journalists have pieced his life together during that timeframe and it’s pretty pathetic.
At 16 he was briefly in the navy but dropped out, 17-20 he was in prison for petty theft and vagrancy. Aged 21 he did briefly pose as a co pilot for about a month. This was in order to stalk an air stewardess called Paula Parks. He then stole from Paula’s family and several members of the local community. Was promptly rearrested . Not long after he stole from a kids summer camp , again rearrested and sued by the proprietors. He then bankrupt his ex partner by taking out various credit cards and loans in her name. You should read Alan Logan’s book or listen to the Pretend podcast. Both tell the real story
@@Asht-mj4wy Ngl when he dropped that "joke" he made about scamming a sex worker out of $2,000 that threw up a red flag to me that this whole narrative of only "sticking it to the man" and never the little guys miiiight be bullshit
@@historicalaccuracy15 yeah good spot. He’s so narcissistic his lies have eventually caught up with him. That story about the sex worker was actually stolen. Early on in his speaking tours he appeared at some type of banking convention and stayed back to converse with the guests after, one of the bank employees told a similar story which he clearly found funny enough to steal and pretend its his own. More worryingly in recent years there’s been reports from women he interacted with during his youth that whilst dressing in a pilot uniform he’s insisted that he was also medically trained so carried out private medical inspections on young children. This was around the time his mother suggested putting him into psychological care. All quite disturbing
@@Asht-mj4wy Holy crap that's terrible... If you can remember a good source to point me and anyone else towards please by all means do.
I gotta say I do kinda empathize with Bryan here. It reminds me of that time I found out one of the two major founders of the chaotic parody religion of Discordianism went down a bad path after becoming paranoid schizophrenic, actually genuinely believing in utterly unhinged connections and lines of thinking and long story short he er, wound up apparently doing something similar... As if the mass amount of alt-right meme lords coopting it for the polar opposite of what it was founded on wasn't bad enough....
I guess that saying, never meet your heroes really rings true huh don't it?
@@historicalaccuracy15 two best sources would be Alan C Logan’s brilliant book from 2021 caller “The Greatest Hoax, catching truth while we can”. If you prefer audio format then Javier Leiva did a superb 12 episode deep dive into the truth on his podcast called “Pretend”. It included interviews with his victims, the FBI, public records and he even confronts Abagnale at one of his speaking engagements.
as a token 20 year old viewer i would recommend explaining frank abignale jr as "if jordan belfort doesn't have coke energy"
I am pretty sure I attended one of his fraud seminars 20+ years ago when I worked for a bank.
The best lie have at least a tiny bit of truth
But isn't he really working with the FBI? If the FBI caught him, wouldn't they be able to confirm his crimes? Or does that just happen in the movie?
As we understand it: his legal status is resolved, and for decades he's worked against fraud. (That's all good. We like that. Hooray, Frank!)
Separately, it appears that the narrative that put him on the map is a fib. (we're... sympathetic to that. We like our scoundrels. To a point.).
But now, 50 years after his initial origin story, it appears (from what we've read) that neither is his origin story true, nor has he walked it back in any public forum... and (most vexing), it looks an awful lot like when he was young he wasn't taking on the big guy... it looks an awful lot like he was doing petty crimes.
(again: we'd be sympathetic to people who do that, but...)
Here's the complicated space we're exploring now: this is a wonderful narrative. And there seems to be no doubt he's now in the business of being a responsible citizen...
But how do we, as rogues, wrestle with the idea that one of our heroes appears to have his career not just launched on a fib, but a fib that is 100% opposite from the narrative we've been fed? If he was defrauding poor people, how do we feel about his false narrative of taking on the man?
Maybe there's more to the story. We'll find out. I, certainly, was suuuuuuper disappointed to find out that I appear to have been duped. -Brian
He lives in my city. Want I should ask him what he's up to now? 😁
Per the FBI, Abagnale & Associates is a legitimate fraud prevention consulting company on a list of agencies allowed to be used by federal agencies. Abagnale did found the firm and hire many fraud experts. He also actively worked to promote their services for several years.
He has given talks a few times at FBI training events. But there are no records of him actually working for the FBI. Although it is possible his firm was consulted on individual local cases or consulted by businesses owners in cases that the FBI was also investigating.
Per his arrest accounts, the FBI says he was on a list and there were agents at a time that may have looked into one of the crimes. This is because before detailed computer tracking, agents generally followed and looked into cases in their assigned regions on their own authority. Case files were distributed widely and could possible local leads could be followed and examined by any number of agents. There was however no special agents assigned, no formal investigation, no international manhunt, and no task force. His extradition was generally just a normal case of judicial paperwork, routine for international criminals who violate release conditions in other cooperating nations.
Many investigators and people who did attend his talk also indicated that there were general issues with the details he presented on the procedures of fraud investigation. Some of the information being completely wrong. When they looked into the matter it was generally that Frank’s talks were an general advocate of fraud detection giving importance to the field, and to name drop his firm where possible. He was not actually heavily involved in the fraud detection aspects of his business, and was mostly just doing sales work.
It is most likely that he invented most of these tails while in jail/prisons to tell other inmates in order to seem more significant of a criminal. As he spent most of his time in custody he had ample time to refine telling stories over and over.
When contacted years after the movie came out about the alleged fraud he mostly says that the movies, stores, investigations, etc bring him great mental stress and hardship. He wishes none of them ever existed. He doesn’t like to talk about them and just wishes to enjoy his retirement in peace and anonymity.
@@ModernRogue do Bert Kreischer next!
@@ModernRogue That "joke" story about scamming some sex worker out of $2k felt like a red flag about him tbh, doesn't exactly sound like going after the big guys to me
I was impressed by Brian's ability to lie about being surprised about Frank's lying about his lies. I was shocked by Brian calling out Jason's lie about doing math. Impressive.
For a real imposter, you might investigate Ferdinand W. Demara (whose story is told in the book The Great Imposter and the movie of the same name starring Tony Curtis), who looks like the inspiration for 'Catch Me If You Can'.
Catch Me If You Can was literally based on Frank Abnegale's memoir
@@sharonoddlyenough you missed the point, OP is saying Abignale's memoir was inspired by Demara.
what gets me is that he ended up fashioning himself as a cyber security expert
yet, when i watch his talks, he is telling people things that i told my clients (for free) 20 years ago
his cyber security talks are just him giving over info that can be found on the net
no one questions how a guy who simply passed bad checks became a cyber security maven....with zero education...they just accept what he says
additionally, no one ever questioned his story....despite the fact that every time he tells it....he tells it exactly the same....using the exact same words and cadence
it's clearly memorized
ask any cop what they think when they ask suspects for their alibis
if they tell the exact same story, with no changing how they tell it....using the exact same wording....what they think
the cop knows the story has been memorized and is probably a lie
He's the embodiment of somebody who lied most of his life, including most of his fake stories.
Clean white hat, clean workboots golf shirt, chinos and a clipboard get you in the back door of any warehouse or construction site and if anyone stops you, ask for Frank, there's usually a Frank and many times he's the supervisor, then tell Frank Tony asked you to come in.
When you watch the game show he was on it does make you question, especially when the pictures are shown.
I honestly thought Frank was going to be the subject of World's Greatest Con S3.
Don't let facts get in the way of a good story.
This was masterfully done.
Once I bought a plane ticket for a friend with the name I knew her by: Jan. But the name on her driver's license was Janice. We had to argue for an hour before the airline would let us board. Believing that someone could just walk on board a plane was such a wonderful fantasy. It's disappointing to find out that never happened.
In the end, the book and movie are entertainment and lessons can be learned from them (including not always trust the author's story). I know I can say I've used confidence to gain jobs (legally and honestly, I'm not george santos), I'm more skeptical about if people are actually who they are, and became a lawyer in Louisiana without going to law school.
He’s an actual scoundrel. He’s that buddy that always lies and gets in trouble but times 100.
Confidence is key, I once walked onto a golf course and played all 18 holes for free because no one questioned me.
A lying liar lied about his lies. I'm shocked.
I doubt he is less of a liar now. I think it would be terrible to work with him.
I just got Disney the other day, totally going to watch Hacking The System, right now.
Okay now I'm disappointed... Hacking The System on DisneyPlus is unavailable in the United States?! WTF!?!
I don't necessarily think everything is true, but don't ever doubt that the truth is stranger than fiction.
The problem with Abagnale's current career is that he holds himself out as a former master forger, and he can teach you the tricks to spot the cleverest forgeries. The fact that he was constantly caught, everywhere he went, shows he was not a master criminal and does not have the experience to teach those lessons. He is still just pretending. I think Kevin Mitnick's story is similarly exaggerated.
😔 wish i didn't see this video even if it was all a lie frank wasn't great person but his fake story gave me the confidence to be who i wanted to be (not fake it but just the confidence of him is what i'm on about so to know this now kinda hurts)
Tickles my brain. I love it
It all depends on whether or not you feel bad about someone telling you a story. You might be disappointed about 'Catch me if you can' not being true, but did you enjoy what happens in 'The Usual Suspects'?
No one would have a problem with him telling a fictional story . The issue lies with him being put on a pedestal as some type of reformed hero. there’s many living victims who still haven’t been paid back. Then there’s others who were sexually assaulted by him.
Hmm, it sucks to see the truth being more that he was a scummy person. But thinking on it objectively, in chalking it down to " I enjoyed the story and movie. Even if I don't like what this author did. " Kind of like how people dislike Rowling because of the views she has. Good story still good, but I'm not gonna be friends with the guy or make him godfather of my children.
That being said, doesn't excuse the lie and his hands are certainly not clean of this . I would never trust a word this guy ever said again .
What a bummer! I never doubt his book till today.
Why would anyone be surprised?😂
I didn't know Gordan Ramsay had an American older brother.
At 4:01 there was no conversion of currency to other nations money. What the hell? You can't just dangle $1000 USD in front of us and not tell us how many Naira or Rupees or Pounds that is. That's the whole point. I mean I'll still watch Modern Rogue but honestly, it's gonna be tough to get past this indiscretion.
Formosa always comes to mind every time.
When someone hurts a major corporation who do you think really pays the price? The little guy,.. simply because they're going to transfer the cost of the losses they just got hit with to the consumer.
That or they're going to start taking money out of their employees' benefits in the form of agreed-upon bonuses that will not be paid now. So con artists really aren't all that cool now, are they...
This is what I like to do. Ruin people's childhoods with cold hard facts.
So the lie he told that was the worst and throwing you off is the age in which he committed most the things. He got the pan am uniform at 24, so his real story is closer than these guys give him credit for. But it begins way later than he stated originally.
That ruined a big part of life for me
Can't believe Mason Jurphy did deepfake TV shows, that's wild.
Did he lie? Or is he nuts? What’s the difference between him and Chuck Barris
"Everything since Adam and Eve is bullshit!"
"Well I’ve got some bad news for you about that…"
He's obviously not working enough judging by the current state of affairs
This is like watching a kid realize his dad didn't leave for milk..
George Santos should release a Catch Me If You Can book.
I don't know the details, but the book Papillon is said to be considerably embellished.
That's really disappointing... That used to be one of my favorite movies ever. Sad to see it was all fake. >
I know you laughed at the pilot part but my dad in the early 70's got his pilot license at 15 because there wasnt a requirment " be x age". If you had the money and could complete the training they didnt care what age you were
funny that the story is called catch me if you can cuz all he seemed to do was get caught
Frank Dux claimed to win a martial arts tournament that when you did the math would have over 27 quadrillion participants based on his description of the rules
Fascinating!
It's weird. He got caught all the time, but working for gov is true. So either he was cutting edge knew people and an idiot (still gets the job). Or a genius with bad luck. So catch me if you can 2 will be howI lied my way into a gov job and avoided more prison.
You mention it a couple times, but is there a pro wrestling episode yet? The concept of Kayfabe is amazing and I think the perfect topic for the show.
Brian did a pro wrestling episode a very long time ago, but it was pretty brief of an episode.
PFFT. If by "brief episode" you mean TWO EPIC FULL EPISODES!!! (go search the scam school channel. They're there.)
@@ModernRogue
But also need to talk about all the crazy stories guys would do to keep Kayfabe... Topped off with Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler
The best lies start with a grain of truth?
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if most of it was true. I once was in an ER and just started ordering people around and as long as I seemed confident the staff would just go along with everything. Meanwhile, I'm spread eagle with my junk facing the world being operated on. It was truly eye opening how easily people can be manipulated. I was doing it for good reason, I was suffering like crazy because apparently I can breakdown ketamine faster than Superman despite having no opioid history, but I couldn't believe how well it worked.
Very interesting. So despite being in a vulnerable position physically, your verbal confidence is what made them listen. Hope you're better and that there was no lasting damage to your health.
Frank let me down- the first hint that I figured that he might not be telling the whole truth is that his life story never changed- no matter where he spoke, it was the same well rehearsed story....no variation on it, just the same life story over and over again. I think the man had to add things to a somewhat boring criminal life and I have known folk (mostly men) who tell tall tales about what they done and accomplished and none of it was true. I think Frank is doing good on telling folks how to not get scammed, but he sure did let me down, I wanted to believe he did all these remarkable things.
This is similar the guy who made Family Romance (Japanese "rental family service"). The guy's an actor and primarily manages talent(for stuff like commercials etc), yes there might have been some "rent a family" situations for gatherings or one off novelty meetings, but most of his outlandish stories about acting secretly as a fake father to a girl for 10 years etc., and being a hired father to hundreds or thousands of children seem to have been proven false and simply a marketing campaign for his business.
But of course everyone believed a good -ACTOR-...
Fascinatingly, Werner Herzog who is also famous for these kinds of shenanigans made the movie Family Romance LLC, a fictionalized version of his accounts with the actual guy playing himself.
😅😅FRANK is the ultimate conman.
The tv show "The Pretender" was based on him.
About 15 minutes behind, but I'm here, damnit!
Reminds me of "F for Fake" (Orson Welles Documentary, 1973)
Jason forgets also Franck Dux :-) the martial arts liar. (Change my mind)
The more I hear about this guy, the more he sounds like Sylvia Browne...pathological liars club =big bucks.
If Disney copyright claims your song rendition, then Abigtales is cannon.
You can get in almost anywhere with a ladder & high visibility clothing
Today I found out the Brian and I grew up in the same area 20ish years apart, neat
Is this a new Modern Rogue Hall of Famer?! You’ve left us hanging with Josephine Baker!
Carry a ladder into a theatre
I think Frank's story is totally True, as Frank is a real expert in his 4 decade job in advising security fraud
You know, I have to say that the story of Frank both disappoints me beyond my core, yet makes me whole beyond belief. His story, the way he tells it, the movie, everything is just ..... SO GOOD... to learn it was all, and I mean literally ALL was just a con... It breaks me at my core. Disappointed beyond belief, yet, at the same time I find it STRANGELY SATISFYING..... Maybe Frank REALLY IS the *greatest con of them all????*
Hahaha I read the Frank Abagnale Wikipedia just a while back and found out that his whole story is just another layer of lies, it cracked me up learning that. 3d-chess level of a con, a con about being a con.
The AbegTales Theme Song should be on Spotify 😂
I have Hacking the System on Tivo...checkmate!
Abagnale started putting out "evidence" that conflicts with his stories and paints him as a scumbag intentionally to make it seem harder to weasel your way into easy money to would-be conmen
I know hacking the system existed cause I torrented it
What is the difference between FA and George Santos?
I respectfully disagree with “he was ripping off the big guy” thought. When it really comes down to it, ripping anyone off above you or below you is being a sucky person.
"Hacking the System" is just a Mandela Effect.
#HoaxingTheSystem wake up people!
I can't believe that conman lied to everybody. Whatever happened to the good old days, when conmen were hardworking, honest, reliable people.
So his biggest con was convincing people in excess about his confidence game level? Sounds like a Long Con... Movie? Job?
Don't forget that much of what Jasper Maskeline was supposed to have done would have been "top secret" and records either never released or perhaps destroyed, just like the official admission that Enigma was broken by the British at Bletchly Park didn't happen until the late 1980s, when some of the former staff gave interviews about their wartime experiences.
True, but this isn't top secret stuff, nobody is making a multi-decade air-tight cover legend for this guy with no real valuable skills or experience beyond petty crime and then letting him blare it out to the whole world and become famous on it. And that's aside from the fact that he was verifiably in jail for a lot of these supposed cons he pulled, a number of them are trivially debunked as impossible.
Like, all of his stories about the airlines are trivially debunked by the fact that even then, they had flight manifests, and unauthorized deadheading wasn't really a thing because they were in(or just after) a period of time where planes were already getting hijacked at the rate of about two a week, so everybody would have been pretty wary of some rando showing up in a not-quite-right pilot's uniform(In an industry where even in the 70s, the uniform standards are INSANELY strict) and claiming they wanted to deadhead a flight.
@@Churbas
These are two totally different situations, one was done by a government agent under top-secret classification during wartime, the other a con-man who created a mostly fake back-story at a time when it really wasn't as simple as googling records to find out that prison and court records prove that it was all essentially lies. Decades later, the creation of the internet and digitisation of records kind-of blows the lid off "Catch Me If You Can".