The Real Catch Me If You Can part 3

Javier: Frank Abagnale was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In this clip legendary comic George Carlin is filling in for Johnny Carson

George Carlin: So it's a good scam. Did you ever, did you ever use your nerve and your ability at this to, uh, to con people out of their money? Uh, 'cause- Mostly banks, probably the most

Javier: Abagnale never really answers Carlin's question. Instead, he rambles on about scamming the banks. But Carlin is not falling for it. He circles back to his original question.

George Carlin: That, that really is unbelievable. You, uh, did, but you never did... Uh, uh, the question was not quite answered. You said banks you ripped off, but, but what about people? Do you have some morality, uh, about, uh, taking advantage of an individual person who... I mean, you weren't that kind of conner,

Frank Abagnale: were you? No. Uh, uh, the only person I ever took was a, a hooker in Miami who was trying to con me into a higher price. And so I offered her $1,000, uh, cash in advance. She took me back to the hotel, and then I told her I had to go downstairs to cash a check, and she said, "Well," she said, "Let me, let me see the check. This is a cashier's check. Why don't you just give it to me?" I said, "Oh, no way. This check is for $1,400. We agreed on 1,000." So she took the check, and it cost her 400, 'cause the check wasn't worth a damn. But that's about the only time. Most of my people were banks and department stores. Yeah. But now

Jack Gremillon's Son: you-

Javier: I've heard Abagnale tell this tired, old hooker joke several times

Frank Abagnale: So Cheryl gave me 400 change. We both got screwed that night.

Javier: And each time, the punchline gets a little hookier Jeopardy!

Frank Abagnale: No, that's, that's what's known as hooking the hooker.

Javier: Let's just say that this joke didn't age well. But the point Abagnale was trying to make is that he's never ripped off the little guy, just this one sex worker. Here's Abagnale being interviewed by the BBC.

Frank Abagnale: I've- Was it a

Promo: victimless crime?

Frank Abagnale: Um, victimless in that there were no individuals that I ripped off for money, nobody's personal money I took. They were companies and banks. But in reality, the money was recovered. I paid the money back, so there really isn't anyone sitting there saying they're out the money, or they, they lost money from this crime.

Javier: But we all know that he most certainly did rip off dozens of little guys, including Paula Parks and her family.

Paula Parks: This is the letter I believe Frank wrote. "Mr. and Mrs. Parks and family, There are no words to express how ashamed and sorry I am. I cannot ask for forgiveness. Even though I will go to prison, every cent I owe you will be repaid. I love you all, and I'm deeply sorry. Love always, Frank."

Javier: After ripping off the Parks and other small businesses, Frank Abagnale Jr. was sitting in jail contemplating his future. He faced a possible 10-year sentence in arguably the worst prison in Louisiana, if not the United States. If convicted for his crimes, Abagnale was looking at spending the next decade in the Louisiana State Supermax Penitentiary, known as Angola. But Abagnale is a con artist. He's not a fighter How's he gonna survive in America's most dangerous prison? So he got himself a lawyer and he claimed insanity. That's right. As a result, the court appointed a lunacy commission in order to look into young Frank's mental health. But unfortunately for Abagnale, the commission found him perfectly sane in the membrane. They wrote, "After an examination, it is our opinion that Frank Abagnale is able to distinguish between right and wrong and understands the magnitude of the charges." On June 2nd, 1969, Frank Abagnale appeared before the judge and pleaded guilty to forgery and theft. Next stop, Angola, the Alcatraz of the South. But wait, Abagnale actually never stepped foot in Angola. Instead of sending Abagnale to prison, the judge ordered him to undergo psychiatric treatment and sentenced him to supervised probation. He was also ordered to return all of the money he stole from his victims, including the Parke family. But of course, none of this ever happened. According to court records, Abagnale never showed up to his first psychiatric appointment and was nowhere to be found. Frank Abagnale was on the run. We know for a fact that Frank Abagnale did not commit so-called victimless crimes. We have the court records to prove it. So how does, uh, present-day Frank Abagnale reflect back on these times?

Frank Abagnale: And I think that's the reason that people are probably a little more willing to, uh, accept the things I did, that I've rehabilitated myself. I've paid back, uh, to society. I repaid all the money many years ago. So I think, you know, people a little more tend to forgive me for those things than maybe somebody who didn't do those things. Ha- have you had the opportunity

Javier: to have- I've interviewed several of Abagnale's victims for this podcast, and none of them seem very forgiving. I know Paula Parks isn't forgiving him anytime soon, because unless a check got lost in the mail, the Parks never did get their money back, the money that Abagnale swore to return. These are the crimes that Frank Abagnale is not very proud of, you know, the ones he doesn't want you to know about. But before we move on to the real unsavory scams that he's committed throughout his whole life, let's indulge him one last time. I'm Javier Leva, and this is Pretend: Stories about Real People Pretending to be Someone Else. If you've been listening this far, you now realize that it's logistically impossible to believe Abagnale's claims of posing as a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, a professor from the age of seventeen to twenty-one. It's impossible because he was, without any doubt, sitting behind bars most of the time. But damn, it's a great story. I almost want to believe it myself.

Frank Abagnale: At the age of eighteen, I was employed on salary as the chief resident pediatrician of a Georgia hospital where I practiced medicine for over a year. I, uh, would have been a gynecologist, but at eighteen I didn't know any better.

Javier: According to Frank Abagnale's very own autobiography, he fell into the role of doctor by accident. But he says that wearing that white lab coat gave him the same feeling of pleasure he experienced while dressing up as a pilot. Here's Abagnale retelling his fictional doctor story on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Frank Abagnale: I moved in this apartment complex in Atlanta. Uh, it asked on the application occupation. I didn't wanna write down airline pilot because they were looking for me posing as a pilot. Right. So I wrote down doctor, and that's all I was gonna write down. Then the girl started asking me questions about, "Well, what kind of doctor are you?" I said, "I'm a medical doctor. I'm not practicing medicine right now." "Well, what type of medical doctor are you?" And I said pediatrician because it was a singles complex, only single people lived there. I thought that was pretty safe. But then I ended up meeting a doctor who was a pediatrician there. He in- introduced me to other people.

Javier: In his autobiography, Abagnale tells us that he would hang around the hospital dressed up as a doctor. Doing what exactly? He doesn't really elaborate. One day, while wandering the halls, the hospital administrator called Frank over. He cleared his throat and asked Abagnale for a huge favor. The doctor who supervises the overnight shift had a death in the family, and they needed someone to fill in for the next 10 days. The hospital administrator explained to him that there's a doctor shortage, and he can't find anyone to fill the shift. He assured Abagnale that he wouldn't actually have to do anything. He just needed to be around to satisfy state requirements. And just like that, Frank Abagnale Jr., an 18-year-old boy, was in charge of seven medical interns and 40 nurses at Cobb County General Hospital in Georgia.

Frank Abagnale: So, you know, I really didn't go in, like in the movie, and look at a patient or something like that. I basically was just in the hospital, but I did get situations where they asked me questions, and I had to go look it up or read it to answer the question. Uh, and again, I, I would have never stayed there even if I thought I was getting away with it because I was always smart enough to know that, you know, that whole thing, you can fool people some of the time, but you can't fool people all the time, and I knew that eventually people would get wise to me, and they'd catch on.

Javier: Right. Right. Right. But according to Abagnale legend, those 10 days filling in the overnight shift turned into a month, and that month turned into a year. Of course, none of this actually happened, but great story nonetheless. How about his stint as a lawyer?

Frank Abagnale: At the age of 19, having never been to law school in my life, I took the state bar in Louisiana. I passed it at 19 years old, became a licensed lawyer there, and before my birthday was over, I was appointed to the attorney general's staff, where I practiced law for a year until I was 20 years old.

Javier: So how did this happen? Well, according to Abagnale, while posing as a pilot, he happened to mention to someone that he studied law before becoming a pilot. As it turns out, according to Abagnale, Louisiana State Attorney General Jack Gremingion was desperately looking to hire lawyers. Naturally, out of all the qualified and licensed lawyers in the entire state of Louisiana, Gremingion offered Abagnale the job. But first, Abagnale had to pass the Louisiana bar. Frank wrote in his book, "How hard could it be to pass the bar exam?" He says he took the exam twice and failed, but after the seventh week of studying, Abagnale claims he passed the bar on the third and final try. My sister-in-law recently enrolled in law school. Quite an accomplishment. For the last few years, I've seen her be a mom, a wife, and balance law school all at the same time. After several years of sleeping slumped over her laptop, she finally did it. She graduated. And when I talked to her about this story, I was positive that she would be equally as outraged by Abagnale's bogus claims, but I was wrong. She said it's possible. In fact, she reminded me that this is the exact same thing Kim Kardashian is trying to do right now.

News Announcer: And as if we ever had any doubt, Kim passed the baby bar.

Promo: I'm at Red Lobster, and I'm in the car.

Javier: Kim parted ways with her cheddar bay biscuits to see the results of her baby bar exam. The baby bar is California's first-year law students examination. It's not actually the bar exam, but if she passes it, it gets her one step closer.

Kim Kardashian: Holy . Sorry, girls. We did it. That's okay. Curse it out. Woo.

Javier: Funny enough, only four states allow you to take the bar exam without actually going to law school, and Louisiana is not one of those states. But seriously, don't let a fact like that get in the way of a good story. Abagnale claims that he not only passed the bar exam, he also claims he legally practiced law for nine months. This story, the one about him being a lawyer, is a Frank Abagnale classic. He's told this story since day one, but the details have evolved over time. Everyone knows that a real story is multidimensional. It's rich in details. So when reporters ask him how he got into law in the first place, he needed an answer. In his autobiography, Abagnale claims that he happened to mention to a flight attendant named Diane that he had a law degree. She was the one that told him that the Louisiana State Attorney General's office was looking for lawyers. Hmm, I guess that story didn't sound impressive enough, so as time went on, he tweaked the story a little bit.

Frank Abagnale: All of those things I fell into. The lawyer, I met a girl who, uh, whose father was the attorney general in Louisiana, and, uh, I ended up telling her I had an, a law degree.

Javier: Let's listen to that again, but this time slower.

Frank Abagnale: I met a girl whose father was the attorney general in Louisiana, and, uh, I ended up telling her I had an, a law degree.

Javier: It wasn't Diane, the flight attendant, who told him about the Louisiana State Attorney General's position, it was Jack Grignon's daughter who mentioned that her father was looking for lawyers. Here's the thing. Jack Grignon only has one daughter. So I called her up, and she adamantly denies that she had any relationship with Frank Abagnale.

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: I've never seen this guy. I've never laid eyes on him He says we were dating, I think, in 1969, but I was married in 1968, and about three months after I got married, my husband was drafted because that was during the Vietnam War and they drafted people. We lived in San Antonio for, oh, w- about nine months, and then he was sent to Tokyo, Japan, and I went to Tokyo, Japan, and lived there at an Air Force base for a full year.

Javier: So the whole time, the whole time that he was supposedly dating you, you were not even in this country. You were probably in Japan.

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: I wasn't even in the States the whole time he was talking about me introducing him to my father.

Javier: That's so interesting. I wonder why he picked you of all people, you know? 'Cause he, he said Grignon's daughter. He didn't mention which one. Yeah. But you're, you're his only daughter, right?

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: Correct. Correct.

Javier: So it has to be you, right?

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: Correct. Wow. And he, he said this many times over, and it's like, I have never... And then he said something, that I was a blonde. I've never been blonde. I'm a brunette. But I do know that him talking about his daughter, that he was dating his daughter and that his daughter got him in with, got an interview or something with the attorney general is bogus. Absolutely and totally bogus. I've never laid eyes on this man.

Javier: When Frank Abagnale talks about this, he goes around saying that he dated Dora Grignon's daughter, but there's a problem.

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: No one calls me Dora. So if he didn't even know that my name was Reta, he certainly isn't telling the truth because nobody calls me anything but Reta except the income tax people.

Javier: Right. Exactly. A- and that's how you know if somebody knows you, you know. Like, if they call you by your real name, you know that, you know, something's up, right? They don't know me. Right, they don't know you.

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: Correct. Correct.

Javier: I also called Paul Grignon's son, Mark, to see what he had to say.

Jack Gremillon's Son: I asked Dad about this specifically. W- w- what, w- what do you know this? He said, "I don't know him. He didn't exist, and he surely was not in my office."

Javier: But yeah, yeah. I bet, I bet your, your family is super annoyed by this guy. Well, because it's kinda like an irritating fly, uh, housefly, you know? Yeah. It's just like it's not- Yeah ... important enough for you to actually, like, spend too much time and ener- energy on, but it's r- really annoying.

Frank Abagnale Imposter: It was, it was more, it was more like tolerance of a housefly. What- whatever. It, it, it just, it never even rose to, to, to being something that he would even waste time on.

Javier: Ken DeJean, first assistant attorney general, who actually worked for Grignon, told The Louisiana Voice that, quote, "After his second appearance on The Tonight Show, I called the producers and tried to set him straight." DeJean said that that didn't get him very far, so he called the tabloids. He said, "I gave the National Enquirer reporter a set of questions to ask Abagnale. What did the attorney general look like? How old was he? How tall was he? What floor of the state capital is our office on?" When the reporters asked Abagnale these very specific questions, he didn't answer a single one of them correctly. Abagnale described the Attorney General Jack Grignon as being in his 40s, six feet tall, slim with blonde hair.

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: Uh, g- somebody asked him what my daddy looked like, and he said he was a tall, handsome man. Well, my daddy looks like Napoleon. He's short and had, w- was half bald. So I don't even know that he ever met my daddy, but- So he, he didn't

Frank Abagnale Imposter: even know what his boss looked like, basically.

Jack Gremillon's Daughter: Correct. Correct

Javier: And the worst part is, according to news reports, Abagnale didn't even know how to pronounce his boss's name. He called him Greg Million, not Gremillion. By the way, the tabloid never did publish that story. So we're gonna call this myth busted. Let's move on to the next one.

Frank Abagnale: At the age of 20, I was a college professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I taught two full semesters there as a PhD. Mormons haven't quite got over that yet, but they're still working on it.

Javier: In both real life and the fake version of the story, one thing is true, Frank Abagnale Jr. never graduated high school. But somehow he managed to fool the airlines, a whole hospital staff, the Louisiana State Attorney General's office, and now Brigham Young University? Posing as a fake professor seems to be the least adventurous of all his careers. But why pose as a professor of all things? Why not a famous painter or a brilliant scientist? Girls, girls, girls. That's why. Frank Abagnale walked around campus and he couldn't believe how many beautiful women just roamed around freely. He wrote in his book that he was tempted to enroll as a student, but then he read an article in the local paper about a teacher shortage, specifically in the sociology department at Brigham Young University. Perhaps in a position of power, he could have a better chance with the ladies. But doesn't he need to know what he's talking about if he's going to really pass off as a professor? Frank says, "Nah, it's easy."

Frank Abagnale: Wasn't difficult. Read one chapter ahead of my students. They never knew the difference. And of course, uh,

Javier: you know When we come back, two tenacious reporters are going to destroy Frank Abagnale's story, and one of them is even going to run him out of town.

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Javier: In 1978, a reporter named Steven Hall watched Abagnale's appearance on the Johnny Carson show. No one asked him to, but Steven Hall accepted the challenge of verifying Abagnale's bizarre claims. The results of his reporting led him to pen this headline, quote, "Johnny

Is Conned: A Convict Who Makes Up Crimes."

Javier: He started his fact-checking adventure with this claim.

Frank Abagnale: Now, I had one scheme in Boston. I came out to the airport dressed in a guard's uniform. Said First City National Bank of Boston. I was wheeling a little cart with me, pulled up to the night box, hung a very nice printed sign over the box that said, "Night box out of order. Please make all deposits with guard on duty." Everyone did.

Javier: So Steven Hall contacted a bank in Boston with a very similar name. The bank spokesperson said, "It never happened at our bank. It never happened in Boston. Never happened at Logan, and never happened at the only bank that has a night deposit box there." Steven Hall must have thought to himself, "Well, if this story is a lie, is any of this true?" Hall would soon find out that most of it was fabricated. Next, Hall looked into Abagnale's claim that he was a chief pediatric resident at Cobb General Hospital in Georgia. This was also not true. Cobb General didn't even have a residence program at the time. When Hall showed a longtime employee Abagnale's picture, no one had ever seen this guy. After Steven Hall published his article, Abagnale decided to cancel his next California gig. As you will soon learn, this is kind of a reoccurring trend with Abagnale. Whenever anyone challenges his stories, Frank tends to go away. Like I said before, many journalists have printed Abagnale's lies without displaying even a shred of skepticism. But not every reporter bought into his story hook, line and sinker. Back in 1978, a young reporter by the name of Ira Perry came across Frank Abagnale's press kit, and it kind of reeked like BS. At first, these claims seem impossible to fact check, but the budding journalist took it as a challenge. First, he called Pan Am and asked their spokesperson if they happened to be missing $2.5 million. Pan Am said that they checked with their security department, and that never happened. Like Steven Hall before him, Ira Perry contacted the Baton Rouge state Attorney General's office. Perry also spoke with the Louisiana Bar. They said, and I quote, "We had so many complaints from lawyers and alumnis and judges after this guy went on the Carson show that we couldn't even believe it." In fact, the Louisiana Bar has already conducted their own investigation. They checked each name against the person. They checked the test. No one was unaccounted for. They said, "We know everyone who took that test." But Abagnale insists in both his autobiography and on his paid speaking events that he is a bona fide lawyer.

Frank Abagnale: No one ever doubted for a second I was not a lawyer.

Javier: But like we said earlier, don't you have to go to law school before taking the bar?

Frank Abagnale: Back then, Louisiana did not require a law degree to take the bar. Anyone could take the bar. If you passed the bar, you were a lawyer.

Javier: Abagnale has conflicting stories about this. In his book, he claims that he faked his Harvard transcripts, but now he says that he didn't even need a degree. So which is it?

Frank Abagnale: And of course, I did study, took the bar the first time, flunked it. Took it the second time, almost passed it.

Javier: In his book, Abagnale says that he was given a copy of the test results with the answers that he got incorrectly. That seems highly unusual. After six weeks of cramming, Abagnale says...

Frank Abagnale: Went back the third time, passed it. State licensed me under the name Bob Conrad.

Javier: Even if he did take the bar and pass it on the third try, it would take him almost a year for him to complete it, as it's only offered every six months, so it's impossible for him to take the test again six weeks later. The Baton Rouge Attorney General's office and the Louisiana Bar could not find anyone by the name of Frank Abagnale or Bob Conrad who worked or practiced law during this time period. Ironically, Abagnale was in Baton Rouge during this time period, but he wasn't on the estate attorney general's payroll. Instead, Abagnale was actually on their inmate roster. They were just looking in the wrong place. Perry also looked into the bogus doctor claim. Like Steven Hall, he too contacted Cobb General Hospital and spoke with the hospital's assistant chief administrator, who worked in various roles for 10 years. No one knew this hospital better than she did, and no one had heard of this guy. Perry said that he spoke with the head of sociology at Brigham Young University. Dr. Conde told him, "We can tell you who taught here since 1935. We know who everyone was and where they are now, and this guy was not one of them under any name. There isn't even a remote possibility." Years later, when a KSL TV reporter questioned Abagnale about his professor days, he finally admitted that he was more like a teacher's aide. It wasn't really that big of a thing. Okay, time to check in. You've listened to three episodes so far fact-checking Abagnale's claims tit for tat. Are you convinced yet? Do you think it's possible that Frank Abagnale may have exaggerated just a little bit? How many of you are in complete disbelief, or did you kind of already know that this guy was full of it? Send me a tweet, an email. I would love to hear what you think Do we have time for one more? Of course we do. What about this goldie?

Frank Abagnale: And I was tried in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was transported by US Marshals. To make sure that I would never escape again, I was placed in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary 15 years under the minimum age requirement to go there, making me the youngest man ever sent behind the walls of the Atlanta Federal Pen, which I still hold that distinction today.

Javier: Reporter Stephen Hall looked into this claim too.

Frank Abagnale: I was there 13 days and became the first man ever to escape the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. I didn't climb the 40-foot walls, but I impersonated a federal prison inspector and walked out the front door of that prison. I was convicted for forgery and given 10 years in federal prison, and for escaping, two more years, for a total of 12 years.

Javier: Hall spoke with a spokesperson for the US Bureau of Prisons, and this is what they had to say. Quote, "Only two guys have escaped by what we call unexplained means in the last 40 years, and neither one of them was named Abagnale." Ira Perry, the other reporter, spoke to the prison warden himself, and not only did Abagnale not escape as he claims, he was never even housed there to begin with. But, but, but this story is not completely false. While digging around, Perry found out that Abagnale did escape from custody in Georgia, but it wasn't the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. It was the Cobb County Jail, and he didn't impersonate a guard. Abagnale simply walked out of the room while the deputies were processing some paperwork. And it wasn't a massive manhunt either. Abagnale was recaptured two days later. Escaping from a local county jail versus one of the most secure penitentiaries in the United States is not really the same thing. Ira Perry and Stephen Hall blew the lid off of Abagnale's story. There's no way Frank could have recovered from this, but of course, Perry and Hall's article didn't even make a dent in Abagnale's legend. So let's jump backwards in time, back to when Abagnale ripped off Paula Parks and her family in Baton Rouge. He gets arrested, sent to jail, and the judge decides to sentence him to supervised probation. A real slap on the wrist. So what does Abagnale do? He makes a run for it and flees to Sweden and France, where he continued to rip off other small businesses and families

Frank Abagnale: Before I was old enough to drink, before reaching twenty-one, I was a millionaire twice. I wrote over two and a half million dollars worth of bad checks in over twenty-six foreign countries and all fifty states in the United States. By the time I was twenty-one, Interpol in Paris classified me as a master thief. There are only 108 criminals who have ever been given that classification in the world since 1902. Today, there are only six living, and I'm one of them, and at the time, I was the youngest master thief in the world when I was twenty-one. Today, I'm thirty-four years old and still the youngest master thief in the world. Of course, like any criminal, sooner or later you get caught, and I was no exception to that rule. I was actually arrested just once in my life when I was twenty-one years old by the French police in a small town in southern France called Montpellier.

Javier: I bet you're wondering how a guy with a bench warrant manages to get on an international flight. Well, back in the day, news traveled slowly. One can only presume that Abagnale slipped on his faithful pilot uniform and got the first flight out of the country. According to Abagnale legend, he traveled the world posing as a pilot, but the airlines were curious why he was always traveling alone. He needed a crew. Then he thought to himself, "Maybe instead of cashing one check at a time, with a bevy of flight attendants, I could write hundreds of bad checks and cash them like confetti." But after a while, being a con man got old. He says he was lonely. According to Abagnale, he was done ripping people off. He wanted a place to hide, a place to call home. So he got a 1969 Volvo and settled down in a small countryside town in southern France. As you can imagine, that's not exactly how any of this went down. In real life, Abagnale really did move to France, and he really did drive a Volvo, but he didn't settle down, and that Volvo didn't even belong to him. He didn't travel the world like he said he did. He was stealing cars and cashing counterfeit checks mostly in France and Sweden, and he didn't have a flight crew with him either. One of his first victims in Europe that we know of was Harry Andersson and his wife Dora, who took him in for a week and fed him. Much like he did with the Parke family just a few weeks prior, Abagnale wrote a bad check for about two thousand dollars today and convinced this poor working class family to give him Swedish currency in exchange. He didn't stop by just screwing over this Swedish family. Abagnale needed a new ride, so he pulled into an auto repair shop in Sweden. You see, he was driving a busted up Fiat and was flat broke. Abagnale, dressed as a pilot, had his eye on that Volvo, so he asked the owner if he could test drive it for a few days. Hillman, the mechanic, said, "Sure, why not?" A pilot must be good for the money, right? A few days later, the car and the pilot never returned. Hillman's Volvo and Frank Abagnale were sitting on a ferry on their way to Denmark. Come to find out, the busted Fiat didn't belong to Abagnale either. It was stolen from someone in France. So tell me again about these victimless crimes. These poor people in Sweden and France lost their hard-earned money, all because they were trying to help out a man who they thought was a successful pilot, and all this happened within weeks. Abagnale was arrested in France, and it turns out that an American driving a Volvo with Swedish plates raised a couple eyebrows. Une vache Espagnole, if you will. That's French for one of these things is not like the other.

Frank Abagnale: They later convicted me of forgery and sent me to French prison. I served my time in a place called Maison d'Arrêt, the house of arrest, in a small town in Southern France called Perpignan. It was extremely important to Steven Spielberg to go back to that prison, as he put it, to the exact cell I was in, and to recreate it according to the logbooks during my stay there. I entered the prison, according to Mr. Spielberg's logbooks, at 198 pounds. Left the prison at 109 pounds. Bread and water for breakfast, bread and soup for lunch, bread and coffee for dinner. No electricity, no plumbing, no furniture, just a blanket on a floor with a hole in the floor to go to the bathroom.

Javier: But he didn't spend six months in this French prison. It was only three months, and he couldn't have weighed 109 pounds on his release. As Alan Logan pointed out in his book, The Greatest Hoax, a six-foot-tall man weighing 109 pounds at discharge is not very believable. That's only about 14 pounds more than the Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands weighed at his death in Belfast in 1981. Here's Abagnale describing the prison cell in France

Frank Abagnale: The room had absolutely nothing in it but a bucket. When you're first put in this room, it is absolutely pitch black like a planetarium with the lights out, absolutely freezing cold, it was in the wintertime. And I thought to myself, "Obviously, they don't keep people in this. They just put you here for 24 hours." They never came back for six months. Six months, never was the door opened. You went to the bathroom in that bucket. In a matter of two or three weeks, it was overflowing onto the floor. You assume that they had to come out and wash the cell out, but they didn't. In six months, it was over a foot high in the room, but you still slept in it. You had to sit up against the wall to, to sleep so you wouldn't drown in your own urine.

Javier: But like we talked about earlier, it was three months and not six, and I've seen the video of inside Pebringen Prison. It's no Ritz Carlton, but it hardly fits the medieval description that Abagnale is trying to sell you. Abagnale was eventually transferred to Sweden where he served the two-month sentence. One condition from the courts was that Abagnale would be required to pay back the Swedish family and the car mechanic with interest of 5% a year. When Alan Logan interviewed the Swedish family, they told the author they haven't seen a cent. According to Abagnale, this is the part of the story where he gets caught, arrested for the first time ever, and returned to the United States and turned over to federal authorities. In the movie Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale is under the custody of the FBI. They're flying back to New York when Abagnale rushes to the airplane lavatory. When he doesn't come out of the bathroom, the FBI realizes that he escaped through the toilet. As the plane touches down on the tarmac, Abagnale slips out from underneath the fuselage and makes a run for it. Here's how Abagnale tells the story back in 1982

Frank Abagnale: And as the plane touched down at 10:02 in the evening, it came to a slow halt at the end of the runway, pulled off onto the apron. I walked to the back of the aircraft into the bathroom in the tail section. At the base of the toilet, there were two snap-out knobs. The toilet lifted up as one self-contained plumbing unit. Underneath was a service hatch. I dropped the door, slid down through the hatch, and jumped down to the runway. I laid flat until the jet blast of the engines went by me, ran across the blue-lighted part of the apron, across the field, over the fence onto the Van Wyck Expressway. I didn't do it to be sneaky. I assumed they were chasing me from the second I opened the trapdoor. When I ran across that field, I figured they were right behind me.

Javier: But nobody was behind him because none of this ever happened. Abagnale repeated this story again for many, many years until the film was released in 2002. Then he stopped because people who actually know what the F they're talking about, you know, actual aeronautical engineers, proved that what he was saying is impossible. Today, his story has changed just a little bit.

Frank Abagnale: That didn't really happen. I escaped off the aircraft, but I escaped off the aircraft through the kitchen galley where they bring the food and stuff onto the plane. In there, they had me escape through the toilet. And my wife kinda looked at me and said, "You didn't go through the toilet, did you?" I said, "No, I didn't go through the toilet."

Javier: Again, nobody was after him. The FBI didn't escort him back to the US. Yes, he was wanted in Baton Rouge, but for the most part, nobody even noticed he was back. Frank is now back in the great US of A. He's almost twenty-two years old now, way past the age of twenty-one when he claims that he finally wised up and quit his shenanigans. In reality, it is just now at the age of twenty-two that Abagnale gets the idea to start his legendary Pan Am paycheck cashing scheme. Remember, these are the ten forged paychecks that earned him $1,000 and change, not the $2.5 million. I have a photo scan from the National Archives of one of these bad checks. It's not what you would expect an airline paycheck to look like. In fact, it was just a plain standard issued check with an illustration of an eagle overlaid on the left-hand side. And you can see this empty circle on the check. The circle is where he haphazardly stuck a Pan Am sticker to make it look legit. The logo sticker has since been peeled off, but you can still admire the lazy craftsmanship that went into making this phony check. Like most standard issued checks, the amount field is left blank and underlined. So he typed up $221.16 for the pay. And in the pay to the order of field, he typed Officer Frank Abagnale Jr. He used his real name, guys, even the junior part. What kind of master forger uses his real name? Six weeks after cashing bogus airline paychecks, Pan Am figured it out and contacted the FBI. Finally, the FBI knows who this guy is. The chase is on. But actually, it didn't last very long. 10 bonus checks, $1,500, and three months later, the grifter's crime spree came to an end. Maybe this story could be a little bit more exciting if Frank Abagnale didn't use his actual real name on the check. Geez. He was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia, the same place that he claimed he worked as a pediatrician for a whole year. Yet the media didn't seem to notice his arrest. There was no news that the former Cobb County chief pediatric resident was arrested. Nothing. So on April 29th, 1971, Abagnale was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for the Pan Am paycheck forgery cases in Arizona, Texas, California, North Carolina, and Utah. And he also received a two-year sentence for escaping Cobb County Jail. But he didn't serve his full 12-year sentence. Two years after his conviction, Abagnale was paroled to Houston, Texas. And that, my friends, is what we call privilege. Okay, so that was part three of the real Catch Me If You Can. We are only halfway, and I promise you, we are just getting started because basically everything you heard from this point has been, uh, a debunking of his story. But the Frank Abagnale tale is much greater than just a, a fact-checking mission. It's trying to examine the, the real life of a man who has led the media, the public, to believe that he is something he is not. But the true story about Frank Abagnale is way more fascinating. Part four of the real Catch Me If You Can is available right now on Patreon. So if you wanna listen to it, to me, it's my favorite episode of the season so far. It's the most groundbreaking one. I mean, it's, it's a bombshell. That episode will come out on the regular feed in two weeks. But if you wanna listen to it right now, it's available on Patreon. Just go to pretendradio.org and click the donate button. I like to release my episodes early for my Patreon supporters. They're the ones that keep this show going. So if you want to support the show, go to pretendradio.org and hit the donate button. And before I go, I wanna thank Kate Gallagher for her help with the research on this. Author Alan Logan, check out his book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth. You can find that on Amazon. I'll have a link in the show notes. Until next time, I hope you guys are enjoying this series. If you are, tell a friend, spread it on social. You can find me, Javier, at pretendpod on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, what- uh, everything, you know, all those social medias. All right, guys, take care. I'll talk to you soon.

Promo: It was 2018 in Los Angeles, California, when a wealthy heiress walked into a bank and essentially walked out with almost $15 million, never to be seen again. I'm Jamie Rice, and on the first season of Dirty Money Moves: Women in White Collar Crime, I'm taking you on a deep dive into the life of female hustler, Mary Carol McDonald. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts