The "Catch Me If You Can" Liar: Did He Even Lie About His Own Lying? (Probably.) 

He had made MILLIONS off of the books, movie, and speaking fees alone. He legitimately worked for the FBI Fraud Division.

He never worked for or with or next to the FBI.

​@@busterbiloxi3833 Pretending to know anything for sure about this guy is equally a con xD . Comment literally only claims "talk at the FBI"

2nd to Donald stealing the 2016 election!

The thing is is we can never know what he did and what he didn't. Because he does work for the FBI and was at least confident enough to be a good enough confidence man to get into the FBI. Who knows what they could have changed about his backstory. The FBI can pretty easily changed some of these past. Or maybe he just pooping lies like 50 times a day I don't know

I heard he and Frank Dux proof read each other's biographies..

@@johnantonopoulous6381 He does not work for the FBI. He made that up too lol

@@rockl.1361 I just watched Wag the dog, and my paranoid brain says that that is what the FBI would say after the book came out 😬

True

Shout out to osint investigation!!! Love research and love osint!

Do you work at a PD or private firm? Did you crowd sourced that OSInt?

Have you heard of the job Physical pentester?

@@Kas_Styles I have but they usually want you to also have site safety and security management experience or law enforcement/military experience and I don't have any of that. I was just basic unarmed (yeah, really) contracted security for a couple of companies that really only wanted security to appease their insurance providers and state agencies that required it. I found out early on that there are so many companies like that who only have that kind of security because they have to and would totally take the risk of doing without it if they didn't, because they see it as an unnecessary expenditure. These same companies will waste thousands of dollars on any other number of stupid things but security... Meh, we don't REALLY need that do we?

@upinarms79 ya. That's why I want to work for a cybersecurity company that actually cares about security and not just for insurance. I would love to be risk assessment for Harry Styles from One Direction but idk if the general entertainment industry even cares about that sort of thing. They really should because the fandom has always been really good at research and finding things.

@@Kas_Styles A lot of companies aren't much better about cyber security either, but since the mid 2000s when so many lost tons of money and faced lawsuits because they were frivolous with customers' personal info and took heavy loses and downtime due to almost non-existent internal network security, they've had it drilled into their heads that it has to be a thing, even if they don't understand or care why that is. Some now have gotten their crap together and understand the importance, but some still just don't care until it threatens their bottom lines. It might sound like I'm just being cynical but if most people really understood how grossly insecure some of these companies are with their personal data, they'd never do business with them. It's gotten better but there are still so many that just either don't care or can't see it as something that should require so much money and attention.

@upinarms79 ya I know how bad it is. Companies really just don't give a shit and it's really sad.

You can visibly see me processing.

I read the edit right at the reference

MORGAN NOOOOOO

@@shadowessence4782 words you can hear 😂

MORGAN!……MORGAN!!!!!!………………MOOOORGANNNN!!!!!!!!!!!……….*thud-thud-thud,crash,shatter,thud*

I still feel for Morgan

A notorious conman lied about being a notorious conman. You just can't trust anybody these days...

Lying about lying about being a liar is a damn pretty good liar to make people think your not a liar. (Edit: while lying (maybe?)

For me it just confirms that he was a lying scumbag all along, just a slightly different lying scumbag.

To find out that he was honest and dishonest about lying at the same time upsets me.

Yes you can pass what is called the ‘Baby Bar’ in these states. These generally allow people who have worked in law firms for several years to prove that their work experience has presented significant enough expertise on par with a formal degree. If you pass the “baby bar” exam, you may then apply to take the bar exam like anyone with a JD degree.

Oklahoma has a law school work around also

Massachusetts you can take your bar exam without law school.

Oh, I know. We are all public defenders.

I think in the story, she's portrayed as predatory and pushy, so it's supposed to be a "scamming the scammer" tale.

He’s also said in various speeches and interviews that the book and film were mostly very accurate to his actual life. Which as we now know is total BS. The man’s a habitual liar, even recently he’s appeared in an advert for a luxurious watch company where he tells the same silly lies about being a doctor/lawyer/pilot etc. He doesn’t need any royalties directly from the movie as his income is from speaking tours. moronic companies pay him 20-30k a time to tell the same fictional story. He didn’t do the things at least once either btw. A few investigative journalists have pieced his life together during that timeframe and it’s pretty pathetic. At 16 he was briefly in the navy but dropped out, 17-20 he was in prison for petty theft and vagrancy. Aged 21 he did briefly pose as a co pilot for about a month. This was in order to stalk an air stewardess called Paula Parks. He then stole from Paula’s family and several members of the local community. Was promptly rearrested . Not long after he stole from a kids summer camp , again rearrested and sued by the proprietors. He then bankrupt his ex partner by taking out various credit cards and loans in her name. You should read Alan Logan’s book or listen to the Pretend podcast. Both tell the real story

​@@Asht-mj4wy Ngl when he dropped that "joke" he made about scamming a sex worker out of $2,000 that threw up a red flag to me that this whole narrative of only "sticking it to the man" and never the little guys miiiight be bullshit

@@historicalaccuracy15 yeah good spot. He’s so narcissistic his lies have eventually caught up with him. That story about the sex worker was actually stolen. Early on in his speaking tours he appeared at some type of banking convention and stayed back to converse with the guests after, one of the bank employees told a similar story which he clearly found funny enough to steal and pretend its his own. More worryingly in recent years there’s been reports from women he interacted with during his youth that whilst dressing in a pilot uniform he’s insisted that he was also medically trained so carried out private medical inspections on young children. This was around the time his mother suggested putting him into psychological care. All quite disturbing

@@Asht-mj4wy Holy crap that's terrible... If you can remember a good source to point me and anyone else towards please by all means do. I gotta say I do kinda empathize with Bryan here. It reminds me of that time I found out one of the two major founders of the chaotic parody religion of Discordianism went down a bad path after becoming paranoid schizophrenic, actually genuinely believing in utterly unhinged connections and lines of thinking and long story short he er, wound up apparently doing something similar... As if the mass amount of alt-right meme lords coopting it for the polar opposite of what it was founded on wasn't bad enough.... I guess that saying, never meet your heroes really rings true huh don't it?

@@historicalaccuracy15 two best sources would be Alan C Logan’s brilliant book from 2021 caller “The Greatest Hoax, catching truth while we can”. If you prefer audio format then Javier Leiva did a superb 12 episode deep dive into the truth on his podcast called “Pretend”. It included interviews with his victims, the FBI, public records and he even confronts Abagnale at one of his speaking engagements.

Very interesting. So despite being in a vulnerable position physically, your verbal confidence is what made them listen. Hope you're better and that there was no lasting damage to your health.

As we understand it: his legal status is resolved, and for decades he's worked against fraud. (That's all good. We like that. Hooray, Frank!) Separately, it appears that the narrative that put him on the map is a fib. (we're... sympathetic to that. We like our scoundrels. To a point.). But now, 50 years after his initial origin story, it appears (from what we've read) that neither is his origin story true, nor has he walked it back in any public forum... and (most vexing), it looks an awful lot like when he was young he wasn't taking on the big guy... it looks an awful lot like he was doing petty crimes. (again: we'd be sympathetic to people who do that, but...) Here's the complicated space we're exploring now: this is a wonderful narrative. And there seems to be no doubt he's now in the business of being a responsible citizen... But how do we, as rogues, wrestle with the idea that one of our heroes appears to have his career not just launched on a fib, but a fib that is 100% opposite from the narrative we've been fed? If he was defrauding poor people, how do we feel about his false narrative of taking on the man? Maybe there's more to the story. We'll find out. I, certainly, was suuuuuuper disappointed to find out that I appear to have been duped. -Brian

He lives in my city. Want I should ask him what he's up to now? 😁

Per the FBI, Abagnale & Associates is a legitimate fraud prevention consulting company on a list of agencies allowed to be used by federal agencies. Abagnale did found the firm and hire many fraud experts. He also actively worked to promote their services for several years. He has given talks a few times at FBI training events. But there are no records of him actually working for the FBI. Although it is possible his firm was consulted on individual local cases or consulted by businesses owners in cases that the FBI was also investigating. Per his arrest accounts, the FBI says he was on a list and there were agents at a time that may have looked into one of the crimes. This is because before detailed computer tracking, agents generally followed and looked into cases in their assigned regions on their own authority. Case files were distributed widely and could possible local leads could be followed and examined by any number of agents. There was however no special agents assigned, no formal investigation, no international manhunt, and no task force. His extradition was generally just a normal case of judicial paperwork, routine for international criminals who violate release conditions in other cooperating nations. Many investigators and people who did attend his talk also indicated that there were general issues with the details he presented on the procedures of fraud investigation. Some of the information being completely wrong. When they looked into the matter it was generally that Frank’s talks were an general advocate of fraud detection giving importance to the field, and to name drop his firm where possible. He was not actually heavily involved in the fraud detection aspects of his business, and was mostly just doing sales work. It is most likely that he invented most of these tails while in jail/prisons to tell other inmates in order to seem more significant of a criminal. As he spent most of his time in custody he had ample time to refine telling stories over and over. When contacted years after the movie came out about the alleged fraud he mostly says that the movies, stores, investigations, etc bring him great mental stress and hardship. He wishes none of them ever existed. He doesn’t like to talk about them and just wishes to enjoy his retirement in peace and anonymity.

​@@ModernRogue do Bert Kreischer next!

​@@ModernRogue That "joke" story about scamming some sex worker out of $2k felt like a red flag about him tbh, doesn't exactly sound like going after the big guys to me

Catch Me If You Can was literally based on Frank Abnegale's memoir

​@@sharonoddlyenough you missed the point, OP is saying Abignale's memoir was inspired by Demara.

No one would have a problem with him telling a fictional story . The issue lies with him being put on a pedestal as some type of reformed hero. there’s many living victims who still haven’t been paid back. Then there’s others who were sexually assaulted by him.

No, they're saying that he went to jail many times for small crimes and scamming regular people, instead of his story of not getting caught doing big cons against rich people and corporations. They're saying he wasn't some legendary scammer, just a regular criminal who can tell a good story.

Okay now I'm disappointed... Hacking The System on DisneyPlus is unavailable in the United States?! WTF!?!

Brian did a pro wrestling episode a very long time ago, but it was pretty brief of an episode.

PFFT. If by "brief episode" you mean TWO EPIC FULL EPISODES!!! (go search the scam school channel. They're there.)

@@ModernRogue But also need to talk about all the crazy stories guys would do to keep Kayfabe... Topped off with Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler

This was actually one of the key points why I was skeptical of the stories. One of the (many) things that tipped me off. Escaping through the toilet of an airplane is, from my research, not a thing that's possible.