“I served my time and came out of prison when I was just 26 and have worked with the government for 37 years. But people only remember me for what I did before that.”

American-French con man, convicted felon, author, and security consultant

Frank William Abagnale Jr. is an American-French con man, convicted felon, author, and security consultant. He became widely known for saying that, as a teenager, he posed as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and a university professor while traveling internationally and cashing fraudulent checks. His documented crimes mainly involved cheque fraud and petty theft aimed at individuals and small businesses. Those claims became the basis of his 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, written with Stan Redding. The book later inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film of the same name, in which Leonardo DiCaprio played Abagnale, and a Broadway musical adaptation.