A biography for Frank Abagnalehasn’t been written yet.
“I partied in every capital in Europe, basked on all the famous beaches, and good-timed it in South America, the South Seas, the Orient, and the more palatable portions of Africa.”
“Most people don't recognize me, but they know my name. TSA people rarely recognize my name, ironically, and they are the security people.”
“I went to the library and learned how checks work. I found out that routing numbers are like zip codes: the checks are sent to the bank that correlates to the routing number. If I manipulate those numbers to a bank far away, it would take longer to get back to the bank, which gave me more time to write more bad checks.”
“There are many ways to manipulate chip cards. For example, a number of years ago when American Express issued the first chip card, criminals would take a small hammer with a little device and bang the chip to destroy it without hurting the physical appearance of the card.”
“I'm so different from the egotistical, self-centred person I was when I did those things. And to watch someone acting out your memories on the screen is like reliving it. Like someone taking you back and showing you what you did.”
“As the lawyer, I found most of it was a matter of research, which I was great at - that's what I did to death - and then basically persuading people that you're right, and they're wrong... I found that the easiest of all the professions to impersonate.”
“The law sometimes sleeps; it never dies.”
“It's amazing how much information we share in social media, then we wonder why people steal our identity.”
“I never use debit cards. I only use credit cards. This way, if someone does get my account number... and charges $1 million, by federal law, my liability is zero.”
“Every case involving cybercrime that I've been involved in, I've never found a master criminal sitting somewhere in Russia or Hong Kong or Beijing. It always ends up that somebody at the company did something they weren't supposed to do. They read an email, went to a website they weren't supposed to.”
“A real man loves and respects his wife and is not only a good father but a man that his kids want to call 'Daddy.'”
“You have to think a little smarter, be proactive, not reactive.”
“If I had the uniform on, you didn't doubt for a moment I was a pilot. No one ever blinked an eye if I tried to cash a cheque wearing that uniform.”
“There is no technology today that cannot be defeated by social engineering.”
“I would have thought technology would have made it harder to do what I did.”
“When I was 28 years old, I thought it would be great to have a movie about my life. I was egotistical and self-centered.”
“Every breach you look at occurred because somebody inside did something they weren't supposed to do. Sometimes there's an accomplice, but most of the time, it's innocent.”
“You get to a point in your life where you go, 'I don't remember what I did.'”
“In the old days, a con man would be good looking, suave, well dressed, well spoken and presented themselves real well. Those days are gone because it's not necessary. The people committing these crimes are doing them from hundreds of miles away.”
“I wasn't a Pan Am pilot or any other kind of pilot.”