EXCLUSIVE: If you make it easy for someone to steal from you, chances are they will
The big interview Frank Abagnale
LONG GONE are the days where Frank Abagnale, former con artist, walked into a bank impersonating a Pan-Am pilot trying to cash in bad cheques. The man whose life story was the inspiration behind the Hollywood movie Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, is now a changed man.
Abagnale no longer makes his living impersonating people for his own gain, but instead uses his knowledge about fraudulent behaviour to help others. For more than 40 years he has been advising the FBI as well as helping companies such as Experian, LexisNexis and Intuit in their fraud prevention programmes.
“When I was a kid, everything I did – none of it was premeditated,” Abagnale tells Business Reporter over the phone from Washington, DC. “I ran away from home and started writing some cheques. I would go into a bank and would be trying to convince the teller to cash a cheque. The teller would say, sir, you do not have a bank account here, we cannot cash a cheque for you.
“Then one day I’m walking down the street and I see this airline crew coming out of a hotel. I think to myself, if I could get this uniform and walk into a bank as an airline pilot and say I am here on a layover, I ran a little low on money, could I cash a cheque, it would give me a lot more power in getting a cheque cashed.
“I never thought about getting on airplanes, riding around for free and going to hotels – just, how could I get this uniform to cash cheques? So then there was the whole phone call to Pan-Am, getting them to give me the information on where to get the uniform.
“But, when I got the uniform, there were no wings and no hat emblem, so that was the next thing to overcome – that and the ID card. I made some phone calls and found out you had to go out to Hangar 14 at JFK airport, to what they call the Stores Department.
“I went out and put a raincoat over my shoulder and my hat under my armpit and walked by the security guard. All they saw was the uniform. When I got into the Stores Department, I told them I lost my wings and hat emblem and got a new pair, and that’s how I got it.”
By the time he was 21, Abagnale had cashed $2.5million worth of bad cheques, flown around the world by impersonating a Pan-Am pilot, and had even worked in a hospital for a short period of time after masquerading as a doctor.
In 1969 Abagnale was arrested by the French police, and served time in the French, Swedish and US prison systems. He was given 12 years, but was released after five on the condition that he would help the US government, without being paid, by teaching and assisting federal law enforcement agencies.
The former con artist is now working on the right side of the law. Companies use his knowledge of how a fraudster might think to understand how to build technologies to stop them getting inside their systems. The criminal mind and the way the criminal thinks have pretty much stayed the same,” Abagnale says. “The truth is the majority of people in the world are honest. They do not have a deceptive mind. This is why they fall victim to a lot of things. They are extremely well educated business people.
“I have that mind when I look at things – right away, I look at things from out of the box. I try to figure out what is really behind this question or this email or this letter or this phone call. That ability has come from my past.”
He has spent 10 years developing a technology called the 41st Parameter with former American Express Worldwide fraud director Ori Eisen, which enables banks and companies to determine who they are doing business with on the other end of the computer.
Abagnale’s passion is now helping to educate people and companies about fraud. He says: “If you explain to people what is going on, it opens their eyes. This is why I write books, this is why I go out and lecture.
The best thing I can do is simply educate people.” According to Abagnale, as long as you have information on someone stored s ome w h e r e , someone is going to find it. He believes that over the next five to 10 years, we are going to see the whole internet become much more dangerous.
He says: “Right now, the threat is financial harm, but over the next years we are going to see the ability to shut off someone’s pacemaker from thousands of miles away. We can actually do that now, but you have to be within 35 feet of the victim, and in about five years you will be able to do that from much further.
“We can already now control cars remotely. If we are chasing after a car and we get close enough to it, we can shut the motor off. We can kill the power steering. We can kill the brakes. We can lock the door, so the criminal cannot get out. Within the next five to 10 years you will see criminals using that, if they want to kill someone going down the M4.
“Then, of course, there is terrorism. It will be used to attack electrical grids and banking facilities and things like that. We’re going to see the internet become a lot more dangerous. “The internet is not 100 per cent secure, and it is amazing that not only do we use this unsecure environment to move money all over the world, but that we also use it for our defence. “Fraud really never changes, just the means by which it is perpetrated. The internet has just made it accessible to millions of people to be victimised all over the world.”
Frank Abagnale’s top fi ve tips for avoiding fraud
1. Shred personal and important information with a security micro-cut shredder. If you use a straight or crisscross shredder, the document can be put back together.
2. Use a credit monitoring service. These services monitor your credit for you – if someone attempts to get credit in your name, or apply for a job or bank account, it will alert you in real time.
3. Credit cards should be used over debit cards, because if someone charges up your card your liability is zero.
4. Do not include your date of birth or where you were born on social media accounts, as that is just asking someone to steal your identity.
5. Be wary of who you hand cheques to – it will have your name and address, phone number, your bank’s name and address, your account number and signature.