1. Professional Ponzi schemer and impersonator.
Frank Abagnale
Professional Ponzi schemer and impersonator.

2. Early Years
Abagnale was one of four children and spent the first sixteen years of his life in Bronxville, New York. His French mother, Paulette, and father, Frank Abagnale, Sr., separated when he was twelve and divorced when he was fourteen. His father raised him the last 4 years.

3. His First Con
His first victim was his father, who gave Abagnale a gasoline credit card and a truck to assist him in commuting to his part-time job. In order to get date money, Abagnale devised a scheme in which he used the gasoline card to "buy" tires, batteries, and other car-related items at gas stations and then asked the attendants to give him cash in return for the products. Ultimately, his father was liable for a bill of $3,400. Abagnale was only 15 at the time.

4. Bank Fraud
Abagnale's early confidence tricks included writing personal checks on his own overdrawn account. This, however, would work for only a limited time before the bank demanded payment, so he moved on to opening other accounts at different banks, eventually creating new identities to sustain this charade. Over time through experimentation, he developed different ways of defrauding banks, such as printing out his own almost-perfect copies of checks such as payroll checks, depositing them, and persuading banks to advance him cash on the basis of his account balances. Another trick he used was to print his account number on blank deposit slips and add them to the stack of real blank slips in the bank. This meant that the deposits written on those slips by bank customers entered his account rather than the accounts of the legitimate customers.

5. Bank Fraud
In a speech, Abagnale described an occasion when he noticed the location where airlines and car rental businesses, such as United Airlines and Hertz, would drop off their daily collections of money in a zip-up bag and then deposit them into a drop box on the airport premises. Using a security guard disguise he bought at a local costume shop, he put a sign over the box saying "Out of Service, Place deposits with security guard on duty" and collected money that way. Later he disclosed how he could not believe this idea had actually worked, stating with some astonishment: "How can a drop box be out of service?"

6. Impersonations
Later, Abagnale decided to impersonate pilots because he wanted to fly throughout the world for free. He acquired a uniform by calling Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), telling the company that he was a pilot working for them who had lost his uniform, and obtaining a new one with a fake employee ID. He then forged a Federal Aviation Administration pilot's license. Pan Am estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles (1,600,000 km) on over 250 flights and flew to 26 countries by deadheading. As a company pilot, he was also able to stay at hotels for free during this time. Everything from food to lodging was billed to the airline company.

7. Other Cons
He also posed as…
Teaching assistant
Doctor
Attorney

8. Alleged Escapes
While being deported to the U.S., Abagnale escaped from a British VC-10 airliner as it was turning onto a taxiway at New York's JFK International Airport. Under cover of night, he scaled a nearby fence and hailed a cab to Grand Central Terminal. After stopping in The Bronx to change clothes and pick up a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe deposit box containing $20,000, Abagnale caught a train to Montreal's Dorval airport to purchase a ticket to São Paulo, Brazil, a country with which the U.S. had no extradition treaty. After a close call at a Mac's Milk in Dundas, Ontario, he was apprehended by a constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while standing in line at the ticket counter. Abagnale was subsequently handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol

9. Imprisonments
After a two-day trial, he first served time in Perpignan's prison — a one-year sentence that the presiding judge at his trial reduced to six months. At Perpignan he was held nude in a tiny, filthy, lightless cell that he was never allowed to leave. The cell lacked toilet facilities, a mattress, or a blanket, and food and water were severely restricted.(if only America did that…)
He was then extradited to Sweden, where he was treated more humanely under Swedish law. During trial for forgery, his defense attorney almost had his case dismissed by arguing that he had created the fake checks and not forged them, but his charges were instead reduced to swindling and fraud. Following another conviction, he served six months in a Malmö prison, only to learn at the end of it he would be tried next in Italy. Later, a Swedish judge asked a U.S. State Department official to revoke his passport. Without a valid passport, the Swedish authorities were legally compelled to deport him to the United States, where he was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison for multiple counts of forgery.

10. Books He Has Written Catch Me If You Can, 2000.
The Art of the Steal, Broadway Books, 2001.
The Art of the Steal, Andrews McMeel Publishing,
Real U Guide To Identity Theft, 2004.
Stealing Your Life, Random House/Broadway Books, April 2007

11. Movies
In 2002, Steven Spielberg made a film about Abagnale's life, Catch Me If You Can, based on Abagnale's 1980 book by the same name. Leonardo Di Caprio starred as the famous imposter in the film. The film inspired a Broadway musical version of Abagnale's life, which hit theaters in 2011.

12. Prevention Methods
Always check if you deposit money that it goes in to your account.
Be careful of things that are suspicious.
Always watch over your money and credit cards.

13. Location of Information