For decades, Frank W. Abagnale Jr. has enjoyed the reputation of being a "master con" who stole millions by forging checks while impersonating a pilot, lawyer, doctor, and more. Called the "greatest con man" by some, the curious part of that claim is that he was not the greatest con man during his life of crime, most of which was spent in prison. After leveraging his ability to social engineer (lie), he pivoted from petty check forgery into talking about his life of crime. However, his talks about his criminal life were greatly embellished. Over the years of giving essentially the same talk over and over is when he became the greatest con. Instead of conning people by passing $2.5 million in checks, which did not happen, he conned people out of thousands of dollars at a time in speaker fees. After four decades, the truth about Abagnale has finally been published.
