The Real Catch Me If You Can part 1

Javier: Do you remember the movie Catch Me If You Can? It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a dashing young con artist named Frank Abagnale, and Tom Hanks as the FBI agent who relentlessly hunted him down. If you recall, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a teenager who poses as a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, all while playing a game of cat and mouse with the FBI. In the end, I hate to spoil it for you, but DiCaprio's character gets caught and eventually starts working for the FBI. What an unbelievable story. I mean, literally unbelievable. And the most interesting part is that Steven Spielberg claims it's based on a true story. Wow. Frank Abagnale, the real-life man, must be the greatest con man who has ever lived I've tried to get Frank Abagnale on this podcast for five years now. Actually, since season one. His people wrote back to me and said, "Dear Mr. Leyva, thank you for your email. As noted on our website, Mr. Abagnale doesn't grant interviews dealing with his past. Thank you for the invitation, and we appreciate your understanding." What? The guy is the best of the best. He fooled everyone, even the FBI, and almost got away with it too. Why wouldn't he wanna tell his story? I mean, I get it. Maybe it's because I'm a teeny-tiny podcast, but he stopped talking about his past and his life story? I mean, not even to promote his book? Something just didn't add up. Today, almost 58 years after his first caper, Abagnale still gets booked to speak at conferences and events. They book him because his story is so fascinating. Yet these days, Frank Abagnale barely mentions his past. But occasionally, Frank Abagnale indulges us with a rare interview talking about his wild adventures. Here's a 1977 clip from NBC's Today Show with Tom Brokaw.

Tom Brokaw: And you became an airline pilot, which is not an easy thing to do because most people who become airline pilots are required in some fashion to be able to fly an airplane- Mm which you couldn't do.

Frank Abagnale: No. Uh, the airline pilot role I used for about two years as a means of getting around the country.

Javier: You know, there has to be a little voice in Tom Brokaw's head asking, "Can a teenager really pose as a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and actually get away with it?"

Tom Brokaw: And when you were in the cockpit, didn't those expert pilots recognize you as a phony of some kind or another?

Frank Abagnale: Uh, no, because I, I learned all of the terminology, and the more I flew on the plane, the more I learned about the cockpit and the functions. And of course, I did a great deal of studying to pick up the terminology and technology and so forth.

Tom Brokaw: Behind you is a scene of Dr. Frank Abagnale. You were a

Frank Abagnale: pediatrician for a time. Right. I was in Atlanta, Georgia, where I, uh, kind of accidentally fell in that. I moved into an apartment complex and said that I was a doctor, and a-

Javier: Come on, Tom. When is your journalistic curiosity gonna kick in? Where are your follow-up questions? Why aren't you demanding proof and facts? Perhaps his journalistic instinct and natural skepticism got blinded by all the flashing lights of a good story. Even 60 Minutes aired Frank Abagnale's story without even questioning it.

Speaker: 60

Minutes Australia: You're one of the greatest con men of all time. You're the daddy of them all. What does it take to be a good con man?

Frank Abagnale: You know, I have to smile because people always say, "You're the greatest con man," or, "The greatest confidence man." You know, I was a 16-year-old boy who ran away from home and ended up on the streets of New York City, and said, "Okay, how am

Javier: I- Frank Abagnale told 60 Minutes Australia that he wasn't playing dress-up. He managed to steal a lot of cash along the way

Frank Abagnale: So I started writing checks, and I found it very easy to go in and cash checks. Yeah, yeah Two and a half million dollars worth of checks. Two and a half million dollars.

Javier: He claims he cashed two and a half million dollars in bad checks during the period from 1964 to 1969, $2.5 million. That's worth almost $20 million today when you account for inflation. Wow, that is a lot of money, but 60 Minutes didn't even challenge him. So if a reputable news source aired it, it must be true, right? Again, unbelievable. Frank Abagnale not only claims he posed as a Pan Am pilot and was hired as a doctor, and he also took the bar exam, passed it, and became an assistant state attorney. He even says he taught two semesters at Brigham Young University, and none of this fazed the media. He told 60 Minutes...

Frank Abagnale: My conscience started to bother me. You

Speaker: 60

Minutes Australia: can't have a conscience and be a con man as

Frank Abagnale: well, can you? No, you can't be, have a conscience and be a con man. And I always believed had I been a little older, say I started doing that at 21 to 26, I wouldn't have done half the things because I would have rationalized and said, "You'll never get away with that. No one will believe you're a doctor or you're a pilot or..." I would have probably never done it. But because I was a kid, I had this kid's imagination that I can do anything, I can get away with anything, or at least I'm willing to try it, and had no fear of consequences. So in my case, it wasn't that I was brilliant or that I was a genius. I think it was more about the fact that I was very young and I, I looked at it through the eyes of a kid than the eyes of an adult.

Speaker: 60

Minutes Australia: It was the naivety of youth.

Frank Abagnale: Right, yes.

Speaker: 60

Minutes Australia: A good excuse.

Frank Abagnale: Yeah.

Javier: Or perhaps it was a kid's active imagination. What if I told you that 90% of Frank Abagnale's claims are almost totally made up? Yeah, that's right. The greatest con man in the world never actually did the crimes he claims he did. Maybe the greatest hoax was us believing his story was even true in the first place. You were fooled. I was fooled. 60 Minutes was fooled. Tom Brokaw was fooled. So was Phil Donahue and PBS. Everyone believed Frank Abagnale's story, not because we're gullible, but because we wanted it to be real. I mean, it's such a fantastic story. How could it not be true? And who would make this stuff up? But think about it for a second, just a second. He passed the bar exam without going to law school. He worked as a doctor. He flew the world as a pilot. Come on. How can anybody believe this stuff? But that didn't matter Because Steven Spielberg, this generation's greatest director, turned Frank Abagnale's life into a movie FBI and forever crystallized the con man's mythology. Abagnale's life story was even turned into a freaking Broadway musical I'm going to disprove Frank Abagnale's claims one by one, not with opinions, but with hard facts, and I have the court and prison records to prove it, too. For the last few weeks, I've been combing through police department records, military service records, penitentiary files, trying to catch a con man in a lie. And I'm gonna try to find Frank Abagnale to finally ask him in person the hard questions no one else has. I'm Javier Leiva, and this is Pretend: stories about real people pretending to be someone else. Welcome to To Tell the Truth This is a clip of the 1977 episode of To Tell the Truth. Okay, and with that, let's meet a champion imposter.

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: Number one, what is your name, please?

Frank Abagnale Imposter: My name is Frank William Abagnale.

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: Number two.

Frank Abagnale: My name is Frank William Abagnale. And number three.

Frank Abagnale Imposter: My name is Frank William Abagnale.

Javier: I, Frank William Abagnale, am known as the world's greatest imposter, and no wonder. In the course of my nefarious career, I've palmed myself off as a doctor, lawyer, college instructor, stockbroker, and airline pilot. To become an airline pilot- If you've ever watched To Tell the Truth, the game is simple. There are three contestants describing their life story, but only one of them is really telling the truth Now, if you're a faithful viewer of this show, you know that this game is played with one real person who must always tell the truth, right? And then two imposters who can lie right through their teeth, okay? Well, our first guest, he's made a career out of being the most outrageous imposter that we've ever come across on this show, and you're gonna see what I mean. The real Frank Abagnale is contestant number two.

Frank Abagnale: My name is Frank William Abagnale.

Javier: To Tell the Truth is the TV show that gave birth to the Frank Abagnale legend. Prior to this 1977 episode, Frank Abagnale was just a small-time swindler known for cashing bad checks, ripping off ordinary people and small businesses. In 1977, there was no book, there was no movie, no Broadway play. It was just Frank the crook. But now, in front of the world stage, Americans from coast to coast are watching To Tell the Truth and witnessing Abagnale lay the groundwork for the longest con of them all, the con that has fooled us for the last 45 years.

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: Number two, did you ever give anybody medical advice?

Frank Abagnale: Uh, yes, I worked, uh, for a year as the chief resident of a hospital in Georgia.

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: Uh, could I ask you, number two, which hospital?

Frank Abagnale: Uh, it was the Cobb County General Hospital in Marietta, Georgia.

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: Uh-huh, did anybody get well under your orders or vice versa?

Frank Abagnale: Uh, yeah, I had no problems.

Javier: That was the real Frank Abagnale answering questions about his stint working as a supervising pediatrician working the overnight shift. Okay. Here we go. Now, will the real Frank William Abagnale please stand up? Strike three, folks. Not a single panelist picked the real Frank Abagnale from the lineup

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: If all the doctors and the lawyers and the bankers, what chance did we have, man? That's right.

Javier: After the studio lights turned off at 30 Rock, that's when Frank Abagnale began to work. Before To Tell the Truth, no one had ever heard of this guy. There were no newspaper articles corroborating his stunts. So he did the next best thing and drafted up a press kit documenting all his adventures You know, several people have tried to challenge Frank Abagnale throughout his life, but the one man in particular had the courage to put it all together, and his name is Alan Logan. Alan is one of the few researchers who have called Abagnale's claims into question. Actually, there is no question. Alan Logan has unearthed cold, hard facts that are indisputable. I wanna thank Alan Logan for helping me with this series. Alan wrote an expose on Frank Abagnale titled The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth While You Can. With the help of Alan Logan and my fact checker, Kate Gallagher, I've been able to request government documents corroborating Alan's research and disproving almost all of Abagnale's wild tales. It's here in black and white, folks. Frank Abagnale sold us a bag of goods. There's no way I could tell this story in just one episode. Throughout this multi-part series, you will hear from real people who had the misfortune of having Frank Abagnale in their lives. The truth is he really is a con man, just not the one you think he is. Instead of this Robin Hood figure stealing from big corporations, he's more of a huckster who is accused of stealing from families and small businesses who never had much in the first place. You're gonna hear from some of these folks, and I'm personally gonna hunt down Frank Abagnale. If he doesn't wanna come talk to me, well, I'm gonna go talk to him. A real life Catch Me If You Can, if you will, except this time someone is really chasing him, and that someone is me. Today I'm gonna try to approach Frank

Speaker: 60

Minutes Australia: Abagnale.

Speaker: 60

Minutes Australia: I, um, let's see if I can get him.

Javier: And I got him, too. Hey, Mr. Abagnale. I'm doing a podcast covering the event. You don't want to miss the last episode. For six years you evaded the, the FBI, uh, pretending to be a pilot, a doctor, a professor, but how were you able to do that if you were sitting in prison the whole time?

Frank Abagnale: Uh,

Javier: no, when, first of all who- When we come back, we're gonna hear more of Frank Abagnale's stories right from the horse's mouth In order to truly appreciate how big of a hoax this truly is, you first have to listen to Frank Abagnale's most blatant stories for yourself. Shortly after his appearance on To Tell the Truth, Abagnale was booked on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Johnny Carson: I have not met, uh, my next guest. I'm looking forward to talking with him. His name is, uh, Frank Aba- Abagnale, and he had a short but illustrious career as a con man. Some of the things he did, he impersonated a co-pilot for a major airline. He faked it as a lawyer on the state attorney general's staff. Passed as a pediatrician in a Georgia hospital. Was a phony college professor, and cashed 17,000 bad checks amounting to two and a half million dollars. Would you welcome please, Frank Abagnale.

Javier: Millions of viewers were mesmerized by the con man's larger than life story

Johnny Carson: Frank, since we have just met, assure me that you are not passing as somebody tonight as, uh, Frank Abagnale and are really, uh, Fred Schwartz somewhere or that- ... you are what you are tonight. Yeah,

Frank Abagnale: I'm me tonight.

Interviewer: Now,

Johnny Carson: you did all these things out of... For what reason?

Frank Abagnale: Well, basically, I, uh, at the age of 16, coming from a little town in Upstate New York, my parents separated when I was 16, and kinda emotionally, uh, bothered me, and I couldn't get my parents back together again. Uh-huh. So I ran away from home and, uh, found myself in New York City without a job, with no money.

Javier: Frank Abagnale explained to Carson that he couldn't survive as a 16-year-old making only a few bucks here and there, so he decided to lie about his age.

Frank Abagnale: I always looked a little older, so I started saying I was 26 years old. People started paying me a little more money, but not enough to support myself.

Javier: Hmm.

Frank Abagnale: So I, uh, got into the habit of starting to write, uh, personal checks without having any money in the bank.

Javier: Abagnale says that he found it easier to cash bad checks as a 26-year-old, but that wasn't enough. He needed more credibility.

Frank Abagnale: I happened to be walking up 42nd Street, and I saw this airline crew come out of a hotel, and I thought that would be the perfect front for me to be able to travel around the country posing as a pilot. Not only could I fly for free, but I would also be able to stay at hotels for free on charges to the airlines. Because they do have reciprocal, they

Johnny Carson: have reciprocal things.

Javier: But in order to look like a pilot, you need to dress like a pilot. How in the world did Frank Abagnale get access to a pilot's uniform?

Frank Abagnale: And so I called Pan American Airlines, got their switchboard, and asked for their purchasing department. I guess this was my first con, and when the purchasing officer came on, I told him that I was a pilot based in LA, was here in New York on a layover. Someone had stolen my uniform. Where could I get a replacement? And he sent me down to the uniform company and called up ahead, told them I was coming. They fitted me out. When he was done, the, uh, the uniform manufacturer said... I said, "How much is it?" He said, "Well, it's $289." I said, "Well, I'll write you a check." He said, "No, I can't take a check." I said, "Well, I'll pay you in cash." He said, "No, I can't take cash." So I said, "Oh." He said, "I have to bill this back to your payroll account, and it'll be deducted from your uniform allowance." I said, "Oh, that's even better." Oh, of course it is. So-

Javier: One thing is to dress like a pilot, but don't pilots need some sort of identification in order to get on a flight? Don't worry. He figured that one out, too. Abagnale told Johnny Carson that he commissioned the creation of a generic ID card, but this ID card was missing one critical piece of information, the airline logo.

Frank Abagnale: So I walked by an airplane hobby shop, and I walked in and bought a little model of a Pan Am plane, and I took the decals out of the box and soaked them in water, put the little logo that would've went on the tail up on the check, up on the ID card, and then the word Pan Am, what would've went on the wing, crossed the ID card, and the clear decal on the plastic made a great card. Look at this.

Johnny Carson: They like this. Everybody likes a good scam, don't they? I mean, secretly. And you traveled some 82 countries, uh-

Frank Abagnale: Flew some three million miles. Always rode in the cockpit, in the jump seat as a non-revenue pilot. Did- Always rode on every one but Pan Am so that no one would ask me-

Johnny Carson: Sure ...

Frank Abagnale: were are you based, and so forth.

Johnny Carson: Didn't any of the pilots say, "Hey, what do you think of the new LORAN system or the DME or..."

Frank Abagnale: Well, when I first started, I was in LaGuardia Airport sitting in a restaurant, and I'd only had the uniform a couple of days, and a TWA pilot walked in and said, "How you doing?" Said hello, and he said, "What kind of equipment are you on?" And I thought, well, equipment. I didn't know what to say, so I said, "General Electric." And he said, "Oh," and he walked out. So I quickly found out what equipment meant what type of aircraft.

Johnny Carson: Excuse me. What kind of aircraft you fly. What did he think you were flying, a washer or something?

Frank Abagnale: I don't know. I thought-

Johnny Carson: General Electric, I think, did make- Make appliances and electrical stuff ... make engines. You know, you might as

Frank Abagnale: well...

Johnny Carson: It's a, you know, if you really look like you belong somewhere, it's true, isn't it? And you have a, a feeling of authority, people will almost accept you any place if you do it directly head-on.

Frank Abagnale: That's very

Javier: true. Very true. Carson was also curious about his other professions.

Frank Abagnale: I wouldn't-

Johnny Carson: How'd you pass yourself as a, as a pediatrician? Now, that's kinda tricky because, I mean, that's technical and, uh-

Frank Abagnale: Well, as the pediatrician probably, uh, it was really ended up being the most easiest what should've been the most difficult. I supervised seven interns on the midnight to 8:00 shift. And, uh-

Johnny Carson: Have you had

Frank Abagnale: any

Leonardo Dicaprio: medical training?

Frank Abagnale: No medical training. And I, I don't like the sight of blood. And when I was, uh, when I would be called to the emergency room, I'd walk in, there'd be two or three interns there, and I'd be called down, and I'd walk in, and I'd say, "What's the problem?" And they'd say, "Doctor, we have a severe in cardio here with a..." I didn't know if the guy broke his leg, had a heart attack. So I would say, "Well, Dr. Carter, what do you think?" "Well, Doctor, I would like to administer 30 cc of this." "Dr. John?" "I concur." "Dr. Jane?" "I concur." "Gentlemen, have at it." And out I would go. Well, I became one of the most respected residents because I was the only one that ever allowed them to do anything without intervention.

Johnny Carson: Amazing story. We're talking with Frank, uh, Abagnale, I believe.

Frank Abagnale: Uh.

Johnny Carson: I find this absolutely mind-boggling. It, it says on the card you also faked it as a lawyer on a state attorney general's staff. Can you talk about that?

Frank Abagnale: And I went down and, uh, presented some credentials to take the bar in Louisiana. And, uh, I studied for it for about three or four months, took it three times. The third time I passed it, legally passed it. And, uh, went on to work as a, a corporate lawyer on the attorney general's staff and, uh, worked there for almost a year. Yeah. Won a number of cases while I was there.

Javier: About five years ago, Abagnale was a guest on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan is a friend of this podcast, and he's also a sponsor of Pretend. So I called him to talk about the interview with Frank Abagnale. You interviewed Frank Abagnale, and that was your first episode. How did you land that interview?

Jordan Harbinger: So I'd been trying to get Frank Abagnale for a long time, and I was hitting dead ends, man, you know? And I thought, for a guy who you'd think would be more about self-promotion, given that he's got a podcast and a book and he's on a speaking tour, he was sort of h- dodging the media. So I tried and tried and tried and tried, and I can't remember exactly who it was that introduced us. And if, if somebody hears about you from three, four, five people, they're gonna eventually crack. But I had worked really hard to get that introduction. And of course, the delicious irony is I worked so hard to get this guy on because I thought he was the best guy a- around in terms of catching con artists and, and dot, dot, dot. Now I got conned, right? So it's a pr- it's a funny full circle.

Javier: Do you feel that way, though? Do you feel like

Jordan Harbinger: you got conned? Um, only a little. We all got conned by Frank Abagnale- Yes ... because we all went to see the movie. We all thought it was amazing.

Javier: And Abagnale's story is amazing, if only it were true. Jordan Harbinger was kind enough to let me play some of the interview from his show.

Jordan Harbinger: This is all happening when you're still a teenager.

Frank Abagnale: Yeah, well, all, you know, everything happened between 16 and 21, and people say, you know, "You were brilliant." I wasn't brilliant, I was just a kid, but being an adolescent, I had no fear of being caught. I had no fear of consequences. And I would have rationalized it and said, "That won't work." So, you know, I went into banks cashing checks, but it was very difficult to convince them to cash a check for me. Then I was walking down the street and I saw this airline crew and I thought to myself, "Boy, if I had this uniform," and then I walked in the bank as this pilot, they're more likely to cash the check for me. And it was like night and day. I mean, I, I... The uniform was so powerful, that's all they saw. The check looked stupid, but the, they saw the uniform and I was this pilot and they did. So I quickly learned very fast that, uh, that was a way to be able to do that. That was just a mechanism, but if I had really thought it out, it probably wouldn't happen. I didn't say-

Javier: Funny enough, this part of the story is kinda sorta true. Frank Abagnale did pose as a pilot to cash phony checks. That really did happen. But the real story is not quite as exciting. We'll get into the details of this later on in the series. The important thing to remember is that with any good lie, there's always a grain of truth. Frank Abagnale's story is not 100% complete bullshit. It's just 95% bullshit. So he really was posing as a pilot, cashing checks, but the book and the movie are called Catch Me If You Can. And as it turns out, nobody was really hunting him down. One of Abagnale's victims said, and I'm paraphrasing here Frank Abagnale wasn't on the FBI's most wanted list. In fact, if they had an FBI's least wanted list, he would be number one. Here's Frank Abagnale again, rehashing his story to Jordan Harbinger.

Frank Abagnale: And it started out more as survival. How am I gonna survive? Then it became people are chasing me, and how am I gonna stay ahead of the people chasing me? And then towards the end of it, it started to become more of a game until s- you know, I eventually stopped, knowing that they would eventually catch up with me.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't look at a pilot who's standing in an airport lobby and go, "That could be a fake pilot. The chances are slim, but he could be a fake pilot." I would never think that because I'm not trained to think that there's a fake pilot walking through the airport trying to scam flights or get through security. It doesn't make any sense.

Frank Abagnale: But even today I do that. I look at the buttons on the uniform to make sure the buttons are the actual real buttons. I look at the wings a person has.

Javier: And Jordan Harbinger is right. Humans are hardwired to believe. Most of us are trusting people. We don't wanna question everything all the time. And why should we? I trust that the dentist drilling inside my mouth actually has a degree and training. I trust that the architect who designed my house knew what he, she, they were doing There's just not enough time in the day to fact check everyone around us, and con artists like Frank Abagnale know this. Let's go back to my conversation with Jordan Harbinger.

Jordan Harbinger: But at the end of the day, I don't have to be like, "Oh no, I've gotta remove episode one of The Jordan Harbinger Show," because it's still a great story. Elements of it may be true. It's still based on a movie. Now the movie's not based on the story. This, this interview is now based on a movie. That's the only thing that's shifted, right? Now I'm having a guy tell me the plot of a movie- ... that is fiction, as opposed to a movie being a non-fictional account of something that happened in his real life. And it was years old by the time that came out, so I don't feel guilty-

Javier: I don't think-

Jordan Harbinger: about it ...

Javier: I don't think you should, though. I don't think you should feel guilty, because it's not just Jordan Harbinger that got fooled. It's like you said, we all got fooled. Right. And, and who are you to question all these other media outlets that have kind of confirmed this story? You got not only the media, you got Steven Spielberg, and before that, you had Johnny Carson. I mean, this, his story has been kind of codified and solidified for decades and, and there comes a certain point where, you know, we just kind of accept it. I mean, it's not, uh, I'm not saying that, you know, with a little digging, we could have all figured it out. Mm. But I'm just saying that it, it's just been hardened. His lie has become truth, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly.

Javier: And you called him out at one point. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: Frank Abagnale?

Javier: Yeah. You, I don't feel like you were just, like, accepting everything he told you as true. Like, there was something... You called him out on a couple occasions. I remember-

Jordan Harbinger: There, there was one thing that I thought didn't make a ton of sense.

Javier: Here's a clip from the Jordan Harbinger interview.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, you musta had some close calls with the cops, with the FBI. I know in the movie there's one that's p- I, I assume an apocryphal scene where Tom Hanks walks into the hotel room and you pretend that you're the Secret Service and you're there already.

Leonardo Dicaprio: Drop it! Relax. You're late, all right? My name's Allan, Barry Allan, United States Secret Service. Your boy just tried to jump out the window. My partner has him in custody downstairs. I don't know what you're talking about.

Jordan Harbinger: I assume that didn't happen, but there has to be some close calls

Frank Abagnale: No, and actually what a lot of people don't know is that actually happened. I

Jordan Harbinger: thought for sure that that's fake. I mean, you're in this hotel room with fake checks and all paraphernalia in a, you know, room service buffet or whatever, and then h- FBI basically s- kicks in the door almost, and you're in there. He's got, "Hands in the air," and, "Hold on. You're late. I already got him." Yes. "He, he's running out the window."

Frank Abagnale: So what Steven Spielberg said is that- What? ... he had scripted, he had actually scripted that scene. But on the set during the entire making of the film was Joe Shea, who was the FBI agent portrayed b- b- by Carl Hanra- a Carl Hanratty character portrayed by Tom Hanks, and basically he's asked him to read from his notes. So he read that I walked in the room, I had my gun drawn, I heard someone was in the restroom. I told him to come out. He had then identified himself as a Secret Service agent. And so he s- Steven Spielberg said, "I loved his notes better than I loved my script." Mm. "So I basically just followed his notes," and that actually did take place just as it did.

Javier: At the time, Jordan Harbinger bought into the premise that Frank Abagnale's story was real. But even under that assumption, something about this Abagnale guy just didn't sit well with him. Here's my interview with Jordan again.

Jordan Harbinger: And he said, "No, no, that actually happened." And then he told me essentially the same story. That didn't make any sense to me, but I let it go, and that's why I remember it, because I remember thinking that is for sure something that only ended up in the movie. So when he told me it was actually true, I just really didn't believe that.

Javier: That was exactly it, actually.

Jordan Harbinger: Was it? I knew it. Yeah, that was exactly- Because that part doesn't make sense if you think... It just doesn't make sense when you think about it, right? Well,

Javier: and, and he says that they actually had to dumb down his story for the movie because it was too, too good to be true or too unbelievable. Yeah. Like, usually it's the other way around. Yeah. Like, the movie will dramatize facts. But that just tells you how colorful the story and how, how it evolves. For the most part, Frank Abagnale is pretty consistent with his stories. He's told them so many times that it almost sounds rehearsed. But on occasion, he can't keep his facts straight. Here's one example. In the movie Catch Me If You Can and on The Jordan Harbinger Show, Frank claims that he fooled the FBI when they busted into his hotel room. In the most recent version of the story, instead of running away, Frank told the FBI that he worked as a Secret Service agent and that the suspect was sitting in a police car. But in 1982, his story was just a little different. Just listen.

Frank Abagnale: A few days later, phone call from the sheriff's office in McLean, Virginia. "We have Abagnale." "What?" "Dulles Marriott Airport Hotel. Checked in about an hour ago. In his room. There are two doors to the room. Both are under surveillance. One leads out to a swimming pool area, the other one to the lobby." "And Abagnale?" "The lights went out about a half hour ago. We assume he's asleep." And then they sit in the window and watch. I always did, and sure enough, I saw the sheriff's deputies, and I knew I had to get out of there. I knew there was only one way to do that. I put on a three-piece gray pinstripe suit, a maroon tie, left all my belongings behind, turned the light on, waited about three minutes, then opened the back door and stepped out, slammed the door as casual as I could be. "Hey, you. Freeze right there." "It's all right, gentlemen. Bob Davis, FBI. We already got Abagnale. He's around front." "Thank you, sir." And around front they went, and off I went

Javier: You heard him. He didn't pose as a Secret Service agent. He was Bob Davis with the FBI. Well, maybe that's a little slip-up. Maybe not. But all those rich details for, and dialogue from the sheriff's office? I'll tell you what, he is a fantastic storyteller. Abagnale describes himself as a master forger. He claims he was convicted of writing $2.5 million worth of bad checks. That's a lot of bad checks. And Frank Abagnale did cash a lot of bad checks, but in reality, it was mostly for small amounts of money, not $2.5 million. This is another clip from The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Jordan Harbinger: There's a quote from the book that I just love, and I think it's a sheriff deputy that says this, and he says, "Frank Abagnale could write a check on a piece of toilet paper drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it 'You are hooked,' and cash it at any bank in town using a Hong Kong driver's license for identification."

Frank Abagnale: So- I could, I could, and I believed I could, and I probably would. I mean, if you looked at the check, you'd have said, "You gotta be kidding. This is junk." But they only saw that uniform. It w- they paid no attention to the check. They just saw the pilot uniform, and that's all they cared about, and that, that was it.

Javier: He told Jordan Harbinger that he mastered the art of floating a check.

Jordan Harbinger: Can you explain a little bit about what the float is? You kinda, I think you invented this, right? You were using the routing numbers and the bank- Yeah ... employees' lack of knowledge to get, like, five or seven extra days of time.

Frank Abagnale: Right. No one at the bank knew what these m- magnetic numbers or MICR numbers were on the bottom of the checks. So I went to the library to study it, and I realized that they were basically like a ZIP code. So if I were to forge a check, say, off a New York bank, which would be 021, Second Federal Reserve, First Branch, Manhattan, and I was to take that zero and change it to a one, then when I cashed a check in New York, it would go to the 12th Federal Reserve, San Francisco, to its first branch, Honolulu, Hawaii. And by the time that check got all the way there, and then that bank in Hawaii said, uh, "This is a forged check," stamped it, and returned it all the way back to New York, you had a two, three-week float.

Javier: Of course, you couldn't get away with any of this today. Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is most likely what actually happened. What's more believable: a teenage boy runs away from home posing as a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, or just a man who's a compulsive liar who would rather write bad checks than actually earn it? I know. This news must be heartbreaking, especially if you believed his story like I did. When Alan Logan first approached me about this story, I actually dismissed it because I didn't wanna believe it was true. What's the old saying? It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled. Take, for example, this lie that Frank Abagnale told during an AIB conference in 1982.

Frank Abagnale: Some newspapers called me the Great Impostor, a name that lasted with me for quite a while. The New York Times, in a period of five years, wrote a syndicated column about me, in which The New York Times referred to me as the Skyway Man.

Javier: Wow. The New York Times wrote a syndicated column about him? Syndication, by definition, means that it was published in multiple places at once, and for five years? So this should be pretty easy to fact-check. Well, lucky for me, I happen to have a New York Times account, and their archives go all the way back to 1851. Well, as you may have guessed, I could not find a single article about Frank Abagnale prior to the release of his so-called autobiography titled Catch Me If You Can. So why lie about something you could easily fact-check? And why are we talking about this has-been con man from the '60s and '70s? Well, because we're now living in a post-truth era, where a politician can repeat a blatant lie, a lie that anyone can quickly fact-check, and people still believe it. Frank Abagnale is a modern-day pioneer of the big lie, and now politicians all across America wield it like a weapon. And the worst part is, most people don't care about the truth. We only wanna hear what we want to hear. So if this is all a lie, why hasn't anyone called him out sooner? Well, the truth is, throughout his life, several people and journalists have tried to expose the truth, but each time he slithers away. For the last 40 years, Frank Abagnale speaks at conferences all over the world. At one point, his schedule was booked back to back with more than 200 speaking engagements a year. But the more people call him out on his lies, the less and less he talks about it These days, he no longer talks about his past crimes. Instead, he lectures companies on how to protect themselves from financial and cyber criminals. He claims that he's been working with the FBI since he was released from prison. He's such a brilliant criminal that the FBI couldn't resist to hire him. That is according to Frank Abagnale lore. Here he is telling an audience at Google about his professional relationship with the FBI.

Frank Abagnale: This year I'm celebrating 41 years at the FBI. I have been at the Bureau for more than four decades. I work out of Washington, DC. I actually make my home in Charleston, South Carolina. So every Monday I fly up to Washington, about an hour flight, and I go home on Thursday evenings.

Javier: And here's Frank Abagnale making a fool out of the president of Oklahoma State University.

Interviewer: My curious- curiosity was, what was it that the FBI saw in you that they thought they could use? Because really, you just were really good at conning people.

Frank Abagnale: Right. And absolutely. So the first five years I just did undercover work, and what the whole asset that the Bureau saw in me was that they could literally say to me, "I need you in the next two weeks to take up this information. You're a lieutenant in the Army. You've been in the Army for this many years. Your expertise is this particular missile, and I need you to go to the base, and I need you to find out this information." They knew that they could put me in any position that I could fake long enough in that position to find out whatever they wanted me to find out.

Interviewer: So in a, in a perverse kind of way, there was- I was

Frank Abagnale: doing the same thing, but- ...

Interviewer: there was an admiration for what you were doing ... I was able to do. Because they... Tom Hanks played the FBI

Frank Abagnale: agent that

Interviewer: was-

Frank Abagnale: The FBI agent, who and I were friends for 30 years. Is a wonderful man, and, uh, he w- he was who I reported to for the first 10 years till he retired.

Javier: And this whole FBI deal is probably the biggest mystery of all for me. You would think that if Frank Abagnale was going around telling people he worked for the FBI and it weren't true, that they would shut him down quick. I've asked my contacts who used to work at the FBI to see if they know anything about this, and all they've heard is that Abagnale has occasionally spoken to the FBI Academy. So I sent the FBI Public Relations Office a list of specific questions about Abagnale and his role at the FBI, and I'm waiting to hear back. But later on in the series, we're going to drill down into some of these claims. You're gonna hear about several FBI agents who dispute some of Abagnale's stories. In the next few episodes, I'm going to lay down two timelines for you. The first is the timeline Frank Abagnale wants you to believe, the one where he dashed around the world surrounded by beautiful flight attendants posing as an airline pilot, where he worked as a doctor, a lawyer, a university professor. And then the second timeline I will present to you is what actually happened. It turns out that Frank Abagnale was sitting in prison almost the entire time he was supposedly running from the FBI. And when he wasn't in prison, he was too busy ripping off ordinary people like you and me. These are the fantastic tales Frank Abagnale doesn't want you to know about, but the real story is even more fascinating than the horseshit we were led to believe. And in the end, his real life story reveals a sad little man who has lived his entire life running mostly from himself. That's next time on Pretend. Today's episode was written by me, Javier Leva, and fact-checked by Kate Gallagher, and I owe it to Alan Logan for his incredible research. I don't know how he unearthed all these documents, but I was able, with the help of Kate, to go and retrace his steps and file for the same documents that he has on Frank Abagnale, and you're about to hear, and the rest of the series is gonna blow your mind. I mean, we've been able to pretty much reconstruct Frank Abagnale's timeline year by year, almost month by month But before we go, I want to end the episode with a special treat. You heard Jordan Harbinger earlier in the show, and, and after I interviewed him, we kind of started talking about his show, and it's pretty incredible. He told me stories about some of his guests, but also about how he was once kidnapped. Okay, now here's my interview with Jordan Harbinger We have interviewed a lot of fascinating people, but then I just recently discovered that you were kidnapped in Serbia in 2004.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Javier: And I, I was blown away. I had no idea. Tell me.

Jordan Harbinger: Can you tell me about that? Yeah, so this is, this is more like an arrest, but it was a BS arrest. So the CliffsNotes are I was working over there. I had a, a, a fellowship from the government to live in Serbia, the US government, so that automatically raised a bunch of flags. I was the only person there with this fellowship. I was the first person and the only person in the country, and there was nobody managing it. There was some office with a, a, a woman who did a few other things. Serbia already was convinced that I was a spy for various reasons, and I had had run-ins with the police because of visa issues and all these other things. And I went to a concert, and there were some state security agents who were high out of their minds, driving around harassing people, and they came to harass my friends and I and some women that we were with, and they were starting to say... Uh, they, they didn't know I spoke Serbian, but they were starting to say things like, "Oh, look at this girl. You know, what, we should take her in the bushes." And it was just clearly a sexual assault situation that was about to happen. So I took off running, thinking, "They're gonna chase me, and the women can get away." So I took off, they came after me, and they threatened me with a bunch of violence. You know, they, they were super drugged up, and I ended up going to a safe house with them where they interrogated informants or took informants. It was also a bar. The bartender told me in English not to worry because these guys were idiots, actually, um, which I thought was funny. But, you know, you're still worried 'cause they were armed idiots. Yeah. And they were th- they were beating up my friend after a while, and, and I used a lot of rapport-generating techniques to try and calm them down. I tried to keep myself calm, uh, s- mildly successful at doing so, and eventually generated an opportunity to escape, and it was really scary, and it was even scarier in hindsight. I mean, these people had almost certainly killed people before. Th- the scary thing is these are untrained. They were idiots.

Javier: How, how did you land the Billy McFarland interview?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so this was, this was something that came about, I would say, essentially by surprise. I got a call from a friend of mine who said, "Hey, I met this guy, and I have an opportunity for you. It's the guy from Fyre Fest, a manager." And I said, "Okay. The guy in prison, Billy McFarland?" He said, "Yeah." And he said, "Do you wanna do an interview?" And I said, "He's allowed to do interviews from prison? That's-

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: Yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: that's unusual." I mean, I've heard of it done, but it, but it is unusual. And he said, "Oh, don't worry. We got this. We got this." Confirmed later that what's actually happening is Billy McFarland is using personal phone time in a prison to call me even though he's not allowed to do that. He's only allowed to call, uh, friends and family. He's not really allowed to be doing any sort of media stuff, and not only is he d- not using his own prison phone time, he's sort of bartered this phone time with other inmates and using their stuff, but also kinda not really. We got the interview, and then what we found out, it w- look, it was a great interview, but what we found out afterwards was the prison warden was so angry that he took Billy and put him in solitary confinement- Wow ... for something like seven months.

Javier: Wow.

Jordan Harbinger: Which is not allowed, but they were, they had had it with this guy.

Javier: He, he probably got more serious, uh, punishment from talking to you than for, uh, ripping a

Speaker: To Tell the Truth: bunch of people off for the Fyre Festival.

Jordan Harbinger: For real. Yeah. I mean, he, he has to pay all that restitution, but he just, he was a guy who just couldn't follow the rules in prison.

Javier: To listen to the rest of the interview with Jordan Harbinger, go to pretendradio.org/donate. Patreon is where I have early release of episodes, bonus content like this, and you could get free T-shirts and stickers and all sorts of good stuff. So, so if you wanna support the show and you wanna hear bonus content and early releases, go to pretendradio.org/donate. It's also a place where you could just chat me up and send me emails. It's, it's great. I love listening from you guys. So if you want to send me an email just to say hi or with a story idea, I reply to every single one of them. So feel free to support the show. Go to pretendradio.org/donate. I will be forever grateful. And to listen to the Jordan Harbinger Show, search Jordan Harbinger wherever you get your podcasts. I'll have a link in the show notes

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