Credit: DreamWorks

’Catch Me If You Can’ conman Frank Abagnale Jr. may have lied about his crimes

Sun 19 March 2023 16:59, UK

Frank Abagnale Jr., the conman who inspired the Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo DiCaprio, may have lied about his life experiences, sources claim.

The conman, who released a memoir that shares its name with Spielberg’s movie, claimed that he impersonated a doctor, a lawyer, and a professor throughout his years in the run, cashing in a total of $2.5million from fake cheques. But, a new report from the New York Post has suggested that the individual may have lied about his illegal escapades in order to gain media attention.

Later, Abagnale managed to turn his life around and even became an advisor for the FBI after his crimes. But, after seeing Abagnale speak at a high school, Jim Keith, the manager of security at a JC Penney in St. Louis, grew suspicious of his claims, with much of the information containing incorrect “technical information regarding bad checks”. Keith further added: “We walked away with a sick feeling that we and those students were sold a bill of worthless goods”.

Trying to get to the heart of the truth, Keith teamed up with a border patrol officer and a professor of criminal justice who gathered multiple documents to try and validate Abagnale’s claims. They found that whilst several of Abagnale’s claims were true, several others were “inaccurate, misleading, exaggerated, or totally false”.

During the investigations, it was found that Abagnale’s impersonations of a lawyer and a university professor never happened and that his illegal activity couldn’t have happened during the ages of 16 and 21 as he spent most of that time in prison.

Take a look at the trailer for Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can below, a Hollywood dramatisation of the story of Frank Abagnale Jr.