This article is based on information from the book "The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can" by Alan C. Logan, which provides a comprehensive look at Frank W. Abagnale's claims throughout his career. The book is very well researched and provides extensive citations to demonstrate that Abagnale's claims are mostly false or in a few cases, greatly embellished.
Throughout the book, Logan exposes Abagnale in superior fashion. Along the way, the reader is exposed to a variety of facts that show what he was really like. It further gives the reality as a great contrast to the lies Abagnale peddles. Below are some choice excerpts to better understand who he is and was.
After getting caught for petty fraud, repeatedly, Frank was ordered by courts to pay restitution several times. One weird claim that Frank was insistent on his entire career was that he never stole from individuals, only large companies that could afford it. In reality, Abagnale was legally obligated to repay his victims in the U.S. and Europe.
"I never committed a violent crime and never, ever ripped off any individuals. I don't feel any guilt now because I paid back all the money. I returned all the money I stole. I was under no legal obligation to do so. No one is out one dime because of the crimes I executed 20 years ago. - Abagnale, 1982, 1987, 1989, [..]
"That man still owes me money!" - Jan Hillman, Lippan, Sweden, 2019
Abagnale's lying about his criminal career went farther. Even as recent as 2017, at a talk given to Google employees, he maintained he was arrested one time. Logan blows this apart citing case after case where Abagnale was arrested and served time for his crimes. For example, between 1965 and 1969 he was better known as Great Meadow Inmate #25367. In fact, on page 266, Logan has created a detailed timeline of Abagnale's claims vs verified facts between 1964 and 1974 that show he spent a majority of it in jail or prison. In fact, on 11 separate occasions for over 75% of that time period, he was behind bars.
"I was actually just arrested once in my life, when I was 21 years old." - Agagnale, Talks at Google, 2017
In his research, Logan talked to people who knew Frank at various parts of his life and obtained many documents related to court cases after Abagnale was arrested. There is a common theme as to how people close to him saw him as a person.
Page 132 - Abagnale's parents were already divorced by that time, so he asked each of them to write letters of support. And they did. They separately described a very troubled young man living in a fantasy world, who showed very little self-control, and a compulsion to break the law.
Page 133 - Paulette Abagnale wrote… "He is in dire need of help, I mean psychiatric help," she wrote, "as he seems to have a compulsion to write checks and is unable to stop. He has spent three years in Great Meadow Correctional Institution in Comstock, New York. Two years the first time, [he] came home and was writing checks a week later, spent another year in Comstock and was writing checks again three days after his release. I am mentioning this so you would get a picture of what his behavior has been like."
Regarding Abagnale's claims that he cashed up to 2.5 million in fraudulent checks, the reality is laughable:
Page 204 - The FBI agents had easily identified Abagnale because of his stupefying move of making forgeries in his real name. They were chasing a goofball, not a top international master thief.
Page 208 - There were just ten checks. And the grand tally did not even reach $1,500. There was no years-long cat-and-mouse chase between the FBI and the grifter, as depicted in Spielberg's film. He had a ninety-day run on his Pan Am checks. The unsophisticated game was up almost as quickly as it had started.
Abagnale describes himself as a master criminal who trivially evaded authorities for years. What kind of criminal was he in reality?
Page 276 - [Police] also issued a description of the highly distinctive car Abagnale was known to be driving - the bright yellow late-model Mustang with the word "Bandit" now stamped in large lettering on both front fenders. Not exactly a good way to blend in. At some stage during his transcontinental adventure, the car had apparently been altered at a body shop. In addition to the word "Bandit" emblazoned along the side of the car, there was a weird emblem. It was an image of a masked man and a Derringer-type pistol firing several shots. The car stood out so obviously it was a major factor in his rapid capture.
He still maintains that he was the #1 most wanted by the FBI for years. If true, it should be trivial for Abagnale to cite the year, yet he never has. That list, going back to the 50s, is available on Wikipedia. His name does not appear on any year.
Page 289 - The nolle prosequi document did prove one other important point - that the federal authorities were not interested in Abagnale. He was certainly not wanted by any federal authorities. There was no ongoing hunt for the guy who later claimed, absurdly, that he was the youngest man ever to make the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list.
Speaking of the FBI, Abagnale claimed to be a consultant helping them learn about fraud and working with agents to solve cases. The book goes into detail about how this could not be verified and that the agent Abagnale repeatedly claimed to work with, Joseph Shea, did not know who he was. In fact, Shea did not work with Abagnale and was not a long-time friend as claimed. Mark Zinder, Abagnale's agent, spent an incredible amount of time with him including sleeping in the same room as Frank when they were on the road (it's a weird story, read the book!). In all of his time, Zinder never saw him work with the FBI even as Frank said otherwise at every speaking engagement for years.
Page 195 - There was no reason that Atlanta-based FBI Special Agent Shea would have even heard of Abagnale at that point—and certainly no reason he would be waiting for his return to the United States. It would be several months before Abagnale's activities would finally come across Shea’s desk. And although Shea was one of the FBI agents involved in Abagnale’s subsequent arrest in Atlanta, the years-long cat-and-mouse FBI chase depicted in Catch Me If You Can was fiction, as we will see. It never happened.
Page 203 - That was when FBI Special Agent Joseph Shea—the partial basis of a fictitious character portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie Catch Me If You Can—most likely first came across Abagnale. Shea was part of the team who began investigating the 22-year-old for check fraud, but he did not chase Abagnale for years, nor for millions of dollars, as the movie suggests. And Shea certainly wasn't chasing him throughout his teenage years, as Abagnale continues to insist.
Page 208 - Ten years later, Abagnale told crowds of adoring students a very different version of events—that he had fooled the FBI for years and that Special Agent Shea "was going crazy" at his uncanny ability to evade capture. He claimed that Shea specifically requested the courts that he should be housed in the inescapable Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. It was, according to Abagnale, the last straw for Shea when he quickly made a daring escape. Abagnale claimed Shea was so exasperated that he gave up and retired two weeks after the escape. In reality, there was no escape from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, and Shea retired almost seven years later, on December 31, 1977.
Page 262 - As former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Atlanta division, Stewart would have known that the bulk of Abagnale's public claims were fictional. Indeed, he was supervising activities of FBI agents all across the East Coast at the precise time of Abagnale's fictitious cat-and-mouse story of eluding agent Shea. It did not happen. And it was clear from his interview with Perry that Stewart knew that Abagnale's brushes with federal law amounted to little more than a handful of forged checks and transporting a stolen car over state lines.
Page 303 - "In all the time that we were together - and we were together a lot - I never actually saw or heard him interact with the FBI on any level. But I heard him talk about it on stage - almost every day. And that had a big influence," [Mark Zinder] added.
Page 351 - Also on the red carpet was a rather bewildered 83-year-old Joseph Shea, the former FBI agent who had been briefly involved in Abagnale's very short-lived Pan Am check scam. Even as the paparazzi were popping their bulbs at him, they were clearly wondering who he was. Having an authentic retired FBI agent on the scene certainly added an air of legitimacy, even though the character played by Tom Hanks was fictitious. [..] It is not clear if Shea knew that Abagnale was claiming that the agent was his "boss" for a decade. He was an exceptional agent who barely knew the grifter. Following his fleeting involvement in Abagnale's 1970 arrest, Shea did not actually see the former fugitive again until years after he retired from the FBI. Shea was working on more serious cases in Atlanta, while Abagnale was working his nutty grift at Camp Manison. None of this fit Abagnale’s tale that Shea "supervised" him for ten years as a condition of his release.
Page 352 - The actual Shea-Abagnale reunion occurred in the 1980s, long after he started his nationwide publicity tours. Abagnale happened to be speaking at a convention of FBI retirees in Kansas City. Abagnale was the one who sought out Shea to shake his hand.
Page 436 - "That damn Abagnale uses my name all over the place, but I've never even met the guy." - Robert Russ Franck, Retired Directory of the FBI's Houston Division. 1978
Page 217 - "Do you hire a car thief to tell you about mechanics? Of course not. It does not make sense, and neither does waht this man is doing." - Former FBI agent Gene Stewart, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta division, commenting on Abagnale's claim to expertise, 1978