Ever hear of Frank Abagnale Jr.?

I find his story so facinating. He was only 16 years old when he started his life of check and identity fraud. In a little over 5 years he wrote $2.4 million dollars worth of bogus checks under 8 different names. He even was able to work as a Pan Am co-pilot, an attourney, a peditrician doctor, and a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University! Everything about his life was forged. His degree at Harvard, his pilot licenses. Can you imagine that?

He was eventually caught by the FBI and sent to prison for 5 years, little after his release he went and worked as an FBI agent detecting fraudulent checks. Eventually he created his own company for security to banks, and is now a legitiment millionaire.

If only we all could do this and have a happy ending

Read more of his story here.

You do know there was a movie made about this right ??? Its called Catch me if You Can....

Yes, thats what got me interested, because I was surprised I never heard who he was before.

This guy was friggin genius, such an amazing story

Awesome movie tho.

I quite enjoyed Catch me if you Can, some of the incidences in that were funny lol.

On the other side of it though, quite scary isn't it that someone could do all that and not get caught for quite a long time, no wonder the FBI wanted him, they probably thought it would be a good idea to keep an eye on him LOL. (Apart from being an expert and helping them in this field that is).

lol

why hadn't i heard of this guy before?

he was no genius he got caught
there are major criminals committing frauds and you will never ever know their name nevermind hear about the crime,now thats genius

i agree. if you are a genius, or mastermind of a crime, no one will ever know you did it.

one of the greatest fraud masters was Rabbi Joseph Prushinowski he obtained $190 Million in International bank fraud. He was eventually caught in Israel.

Love that movie. Surprised nobody before him thought of using the logos on model airplanes to make fake airline-pilot checks

I kind of doubt that it's the sort of thing the F.B.I. is happy to discuss. The guy pulled all that off and evaded them for a long time.

You never know what is going through someones mind while they are sniffing model airplane glue.

I agree. They probably want people to think that they can catch crooks just *snap* like that.


That's funny...but true

If I can remember correctly the chick got screwed twice. Once by him then his fake check. I wonder if she was able to cash it. The movie was pretty good and it's weird how everything seemed to work out for him until the end. I guess some people are just a little bit more lucky than others.

Runner-up goes to Brian Bosworth who conned the Seatle Seahawks into giving him 10 million...

"Ever hear of Frank Abagnale Jr.? "

Yes, but I would not go so far as to say that he pulled the best fast-one in history.

My front runner is Guiseppe Balsamo, better know as Alessandro Comte di Cagliostro. He managed to run away with part of France's royal treasure.

Edit: missed apostrophe