The World's Most Fascinating Criminal

A book was written about his life.

A movie was made about the book.

A Broadway play was created after the movie.

As a teenager, he was a Pan-Am airline pilot, a medical doctor, and spent a year practicing law but it was all fake. He was the greatest imposter, ever, and it all started when he was only 16 years of age in 1964.

He is Frank Abagnale and the title of the movie about his life is Catch Me if You Can. Abagnale's part was played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The movie came out in 2002 and was an instant hit. I'll assume you've seen it -- if you haven't, it's very entertaining and worth your time.

About a year after the film was released, I attended the Governor of Florida's convention on tourism, an annual event that drew 1,000 travel vendors to listen to the Governor's pep talk and a keynote speaker. This time, the keynote was delivered by Frank Abagnale.

footnote: his attendance and speech that day was sponsored by and paid for by American Express.

He opened his remarks by recognizing the film but admitted he'd never met director Steven Spielberg or DiCaprio, was never invited on set during filming and was never asked to consult on the making of the picture. Also, there was no FBI agent Hanratty as played by Tom Hanks in the film — the real agent was Joe Shea. Shea and Abagnale would go on to have a 30-year friendship.

Following his talk about the movie, he got very personal. He claimed every night of his life before he left home on his million-mile odyssey of fraud and theft (he swindled two and a half million dollars from hundreds of banks while he was still a teenager) his father came into his room to talk and kiss him goodnight. He went on to describe a very close-knit family, built on kindness and devotion to one another.

Really? Then ... how did he ever become one of the FBI's top criminals?

I won't use this space to answer that question - it's beautifully executed in the film. But, it was the passion with which he talked about family and the way he described his love for his parents that made me take notice.

Frank Abagnale is a very gifted speaker. He didn’t give a speech, he had a conversation. While he spoke, it seemed like he was just talking to me. I wondered if the other thousand people in the room felt the same way. His charisma and soft manner probably had a lot to do with the success he had in convincing people he was something he wasn’t.

footnote: he had two million dollars stashed in banks that were repaid to his victim companies and the remaining $500,000 was also eventually paid back "but it took a while".

Each year in Toronto, I was part of a group that created a fundraiser for the support of the Special Olympics. We'd had several keynote speakers at our event over the years -- a host of fabulous athletes with their inspirational messages along with some real knockouts like Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz and Steeler's Rocky Bleier.

From the speech I had just heard, I reasoned that Frank Abagnale and his out-front show of emotion might be better than all of them. Before he left the building, I had to figure out a way to get in front of him to make my pitch. But, getting someone to speak for free wasn't really part of my skill set. When he finished his speech the room erupted with a noisy standing ovation. He moved to the curtain behind the stage and departed. I raced to the door at the end of the hall to see if I could intercept him.

When I saw him approaching the hotel’s escalator, I turned on the speed to meet him before he stepped on. In the 30 or so seconds it took to ride to the main floor, I explained who I was, and who I represented, described our fundraiser, and asked if there was any way he'd consider coming to Toronto to deliver the speech he'd just given to the travel folks.

In that same few seconds, he agreed to attend, waived his appearance fee, told me he would pay his own travel expenses and, if he already had an appointment on his calendar, he'd move it so as not to disappoint us.

I couldn't wait to get to a phone to tell my Special Olympic colleagues about what just happened. When I finally reached the person responsible for arranging guest speakers, I was heartbroken to find that we already had our celebrity confirmed for that year's event.

Coincidentally, it was another imposter. American writer, George Plimpton, the guy who wrote Paper Lion. His book also became a movie starring Alan Alda as Plimpton. The storyline was how Plimpton became an NHL goalie, an NFL kicker, and a Vegas comedian.

footnote: the day before his fundraiser speech, I met Plimpton in the hotel elevator. When I asked if he was ready to deliver his speech, he said, "I crafted it on the plane during the one-hour flight to Toronto". That's exactly what it sounded like when he delivered it the next day ... uninteresting and boring, he might have also said, "I scribbled it on a cocktail napkin”. It was awful.

As described in Catch Me if You Can, Abagnale spent time in a Swedish and French prison before being extradited to the US where he faced a 12-year sentence in a maximum-security prison. He was removed from prison after four years with the understanding that he’d work for the FBI helping them to catch criminals like him.

When he was released in his early twenties, he knew more about running a scam than anyone. He was a professor of fraud and put his knowledge to good use by producing seminars to educate future FBI agents.

Today, he runs a very successful (legitimate) company whose address is on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington. He designs security holographs, delivers classes on how to protect against cybercrime, and gives advice on how to stay safe from internet intruders.

If you would like to see a variation of the speech I heard at the Governor’s conference as well as his thoughts on cyber-crime, computer passwords and why you should never own a Debit card, GO TO YOUTUBE AND ENTER HIS NAME.

footnote: I still have his business card from that escalator encounter.