5. Catch Me If You Can This 2002 movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, Jr., a con artist, who got his start when he was only a teen and pretended to a be a doctor, airline pilot, lawyer, and more.
Now, Holmes is awaiting trial on a variety of fraud charges (she pleaded not guilty) and faces up to 20 years in prison. 5. Catch Me If You Can This 2002 movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, Jr., a con artist, who got his start when he was only a teen and pretended to a be a doctor, airline pilot, lawyer, and more. 6.
Just a few years later, the FBI tracks him down in France; he's extradited, tried, and jailed for passing more than $4,000,000 in bad checks. Along the way, he's posed as a Pan Am pilot, a pediatrician, and an attorney.
The Inventor premiered on HBO on Mar. 18 of this year and is a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, and her former company, Theranos. Theranos was meant to develop technology to do hundreds of blood tests with only a very small amount of blood, but claims arose that the technology wasn't accurate.
After two years, Frank is released into Carl's custody (as was seen in the opening of the film), and on Christmas Eve 1969, the plane extraditing Frank flies into the United States. As they prepare to land, Carl informs Frank (who has been requesting several times to call his father) that Frank Sr died accidentally the previous year.
When authorities wised up to his frequent flying, Abagnale posed as a Georgia doctor for a year before masquerading as an attorney in New Orleans, although this last role wasn't entirely fake — Abagnale did manage to pass the bar exam.
Catch Me If You Can2002'Catch Me If You Can': Behind the...'Catch Me If You Can': The Castin...Frank Abagnale: Between R...'Catch Me If You Can': In ClosingFrank Abagnale/Movies
Airline pilot After being released into the custody of his father to face the stolen car charges, 17-year-old Abagnale decided to impersonate a pilot. He obtained a uniform at a Manhattan uniform company, but was arrested in Tuckahoe, New York days later.
First Plot Point: After running away because of his parents' divorce (and the lawyer's trying to force him to choose between them), Frank decides to pretend to be an airline pilot so he can allay people's suspicions when cashing the fake checks on which he's trying to survive.
The character is said to be a combination of a number of FBI agents who worked to catch Abagnale, but the relationship between the two is loosely based on Frank's relationship with real FBI agent, Joseph Shea. According to Abagnale, their friendship lasted 30 years, until Shea's death in 2005.
Catch Me If You Can2002'Catch Me If You Can': Behind the...'Catch Me If You Can': The Castin...Frank Abagnale: Between R...'Catch Me If You Can': In ClosingFrank Abagnale/Movies
In a 2003 interview for the book Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale answered the question of veracity, saying that the film is 80% accurate, and in his foreword for the screenplay of the film, he amended his statement, calling the film 90% accurate, presenting a narrative that stayed true to how things really were.
BBC HARDTalk interviews former scam artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., who discusses his life as a con man, including posing as a pilot and a doctor. He also discusses the movie, his capture, his five years in Federal prison and meeting his wife while working undercover with the FBI. His son also became an FBI agent.
And far from being a sophisticated fraudster that hit the big corporations, he ripped off ordinary hard-working people. The tiny grain of truth in Catch Me if You Can is that for a brief period in 1970, when Abagnale was 22 years old, he did dress as a Pan Am pilot for three months.
The film begins by introducing Frank's home life, in which he comes to discover that his mother (Nathalie Baye) has been cheating on his father. When faced with their impending divorce and the fact that he must choose who he wants to live with, Frank runs away, thus beginning his conman adventures.
After making a fake transcript from Harvard, he prepared himself for the compulsory exam. Despite failing twice, he claims to have passed the bar exam legitimately on the third try after eight weeks of study, because "Louisiana at the time allowed you to take the Bar over and over as many times as you needed.
Watch Catch Me If You Can | Netflix.
7. The Wizard Of Lies. The Wizard of Lies premiered on HBO in 2017, and tells the story of Bernie Madoff and the biggest Ponzi scheme ever.
6. The Wolf Of Wall Street. Another DiCaprio movie, The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, a stock market fraudster.
18 of this year and is a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, and her former company, Theranos. Theranos was meant to develop technology to do hundreds of blood tests with only a very small amount of blood, but claims arose that the technology wasn't accurate. Now, Holmes is awaiting trial on a variety of fraud charges (she pleaded not guilty) and faces up to 20 years in prison.
8. Catfish. Moving in a completely different direction, we have Catfish , the documentary movie that inspired the MTV series of the same name. The main scammer on Catfish wasn't conning anyone for money, but it's still a story of someone who wasn't who they claimed to be.
This documentary from Alex Gibney (who also directed The Inventor) is about the demise of Enron. It might not be scammy in the same way some of the other movies are, but there's a lot of fraud involved.
American Hustle isn't 100 percent accurate to what happened in real life and the names are changed — there's even text at the beginning of the movie that says, "Some of this actually happened" — but the film is based on the Abscam FBI investigation in the '70s and '80s.
Fyre Fraud is Hulu's Fyre Festival documentary, and it has a broader scope than the Netflix one. (More, what does this all say about us as a culture?) Also, unlike the Netflix doc, it has an interview with Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland.
Unfortunately for him, a stewardess (and ex-girlfriend) recognized his face on a wanted poster and alerted the authorities. Abagnale served time in France, Sweden, and the United States and performed two daring escapes during this period.
On one such occasion, Abagnale accepted the offer but promptly put the plane on autopilot because, in his words, he ‘couldn’t fly a kite.’
Abagnale rang Pan American World Airways and claimed he was a pilot who lost his uniform when it was getting cleaned at a hotel. He used a fake employee ID to complete the con, and forged a Federal Aviation Administration pilot’s license. While the movie made it appear as if it was a simple process, it was anything but. Abagnale had to collect his uniform at the airport and was terrified that other staff would discover he was a teenager. He posed as a businessman to get a security badge and pretended to be a pilot named Frank Williams to acquire his FAA license.
Abagnale was released early when he agreed to a U.S. Government request to teach them about ways to prevent other con artists from successfully committing fraud. After being hired and fired from several jobs once his criminal past was revealed, he set up Abagnale & Associates in Oklahoma. The organization advises companies on fraud, and some 14,000 businesses have adopted his anti-fraud measures. To this day, Abagnale works with the FBI and teaches at their Academy.
Abagnale worked as a physician under the alias Frank William for 11 months in a Georgia hospital after narrowly evading capture as a pilot. He even worked the nightshift as a practicing pediatrician, but fortunately, no emergencies occurred during his watch.
Reel Rundown – Catch Me If You Can Is a Movie Based on the Real-Life Story of Frank Abagnale
On this occasion, Abagnale claimed to have escaped from the VC10 jetliner he was on via the bathroom as the plane landed. However, employees of the Aerospace Industries Association say it is impossible because the hatch is sealed shut.
In the movie, the accountant is much more than a number cruncher. He has Asperger’s syndrome, which is on Autism spectrum, and the film portrays him using his disability to quickly decipher the books for crime bosses. The movie has many twists and turns and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.
This documentary was the project of professor Kelly Richmond-Pope. She recounts the story of Rita Crundwell who managed to embezzle more than $53 million from her small hometown while working as the city clerk for over 20 years.
This movie demonstrates that age is meaningless. Abagnale started his crimes at 16, stealing his father’s credit card.
Swallow our pride and ask others to explain it to us. Madoff used complicated quantitative analytics to keep investigators from getting too close.
A little-known fact: Belfort went to federal prison for 22 months where one of his “cube-mates” was Tommy Chong (comedian, actor, activist). It was Chong who convinced Belfort to write his life story, which eventually served as inspiration for the film. As CFEs, we all know doing our own research is best.
Wizard of Lies (2017) Like many of the films on this list, this one is also based on real-life events. The drama is based on the life and crimes of the late Bernie Madoff, who founded his own company on Wall Street in the 1960s. Over many years his company turned into one of the largest investment funds in the world.
This film is based on the true-life story of Jordan Belfort, a financial broker who became enormously wealthy by committing fraud and stock market manipulation. The movie portrays the extravagant lifestyle of Belfort as he drinks, drugs and sexes his way through his early 20s, giving the SEC and FBI ample opportunity to investigate. A little-known fact: Belfort went to federal prison for 22 months where one of his “cube-mates” was Tommy Chong (comedian, actor, activist). It was Chong who convinced Belfort to write his life story, which eventually served as inspiration for the film.
While Frank Abagnale was still a teenager, his father started to face some trouble with the IRS, and their family was forced to move out of their luxurious house to a small apartment. During this transition, Frank transferred to a public school and soon got in trouble by pretending to be a substitute French teacher on his very first day.
After his stint as a substitute French teacher, Frank's home life didn't improve. His parents ended up getting a divorce and Frank ran away from home, given that his parents' split wasn't exactly amicable considering his mother was having an affair with his father's close friend.
Frank's wild cons left a trail behind them and soon the FBI started to catch on. They sent agent Carl Hanratty to track him down and he soon found Frank at a hotel. But Frank, having lived a few years as a successful con artist, continued to lie his way out of any situation.
Soon after escaping Carl, Frank decided to switch careers to lose his trail. He quickly became Dr. Frank Conners, a handsome yet successful doctor of medicine. But his plans were quickly skewed when he fell in love with a young hospital worker named Brenda.
A message posted last Thursday on a Facebook page appearing to belong to Love-Robinson says he has been battling stage 2 kidney cancer and identity theft.
An 18-year-old Florida man is accused of posing as a licensed doctor, going as far as opening his own West Palm Beach offices — calling it the New Birth New Life Medical Center & Urgent Care, with a websiteand all — in order to solicit patients, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday.
On the site, Love-Robinson in his biography is referred to as a "well rounded professional" who utilizes "physiological, psychological, and mechanical methods" to treat patients . Those methods range from air to water to phototherapy to "nature's remedies.".
Erik Ortiz is a staff writer for NBC News focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.
The Palm Beach County Department of Health had previously investigated and cited the teen in October for the same scam, authorities said. Health officials on Tuesday sent a cease-and-desist notice and also issued Love-Robinson several citations.
Abagnale was pictured in the newspaper, seated in a car, being questioned by special agent Richard Miller of the FBI. Abagnale was reported as scheduled to face Federal District Court Judge Sherrill Halbert in Sacramento to answer to the charges.
The veracity of most of Abagnale’s claims have been questioned. In 2021, journalist Alan C. Logan provided documentary evidence that the majority of Abagnale's claims had at best been wildly exaggerated, and at worst completely invented.
3 years, 3 months, and 7 days in a US Federal prison. 3 years in Great Meadow Correctional Facility, NY (age 17-20) Frank William Abagnale Jr. ( / ˈæbəɡneɪl /; born April 27, 1948) is an American fraudster. According to Abagnale, he had begun to con people and pass bad checks when he was 15 years old. During his teens, he estimated that he flew ...
After being released into the custody of his father to face the stolen car charges, 17-year-old Abagnale decided to impersonate a pilot. He obtained a uniform at a Manhattan uniform company, but was arrested in Tuckahoe, New York days later. Abagnale was sentenced to three years at the Great Meadow Prison in Comstock, New York. After serving only two years of his sentence, he was released into the custody of his mother. However, he broke the terms of his parole with a stolen car conviction in Boston, Massachusetts, and was returned to Great Meadow for one year.
Abagnale was only 15 at the time. Abagnale's early confidence tricks included writing personal checks on his own overdrawn account. This, however, would work for only a limited time before the bank demanded payment, so over time and through experimentation, he developed different ways of defrauding banks.
After his release, Abagnale stated that he performed numerous jobs, including cook, grocer, and movie projectionist, but he was fired from most of these after it was discovered he had been hired without revealing his criminal past. He again posed as a pilot in 1974 to obtain a job at Camp Manison, a summer children's camp in Texas where he was arrested for stealing cameras from his co-workers. After he received only a fine, he obtained a position at a Houston area orphanage by pretending to be a pilot with a master's degree. This job had him finding foster homes for the children living at the orphanage. This ruse was eventually discovered by his parole officer, who swiftly removed him from his orphanage work and moved him into living quarters above his own garage so that he "could keep an eye on him". His next position was at Aetna, where he was fired and sued for check fraud.
Upon his arrest he was found to have illegally driven his Florida rental car out of state and to possess falsified airline employee identification. The following day detectives determined that Abagnale had stolen blank checks from his host family and a local business in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he was subsequently charged with theft and forgery. Unable to make bail, he was convicted on June 2, 1969, and was sentenced to 12 years of supervised probation, but he soon fled Louisiana for Europe.
Or still: “My escape [from an Atlanta prison] made the front page of one New York paper, ‘Frank Abagnale, known to police the world over [...] and who once flushed himself down an airline toilet to elude officers, is at large again…’ the story commenced.” (book “Catch Me If You Can”, page 204)
Abagnale did appear on that program, here‘s the picture (signed by Abagnale!) that proves it. He’s the pilot in the middle. Here, one “impostor” is dressed as doctor, the second as pilot and the third as inmate .)
His fourth career was left out of the movie because of time constraints and because it didn’t add any new elements. Indeed, Abagnale also handled a summer course as a sociology professor at the Brigham Young University in Utah.
In 1977, Abagnale appears on a TV show called “To Tell the Truth” to tell his amazing story. This TV quiz has a simple formula: three friends play the same character, people have to guess which of the three is for real. Abagnale did appear on that program, here‘s the picture (signed by Abagnale!) that proves it.
speak, also called a “ John Doe ”) was called the “ Skywayman ” by the law and the press, because of his posing as an airline pilot. (In scene 11, Abagnale meets a Pan Am P.R. guy. He’s nervous, jumpy because there’s another piece about ...
In the interview included in the 2003 edition of the book, Abagnale claims about 80% of the movie is accurate (book “Catch Me If You Can”, page 214). In his foreword to “ Catch Me If You Can — The Complete Screenplay ” (page 8), he goes even further: “ [...] 90% of the film is accurate. [...] the movie really captures my essence of the story.”
Scene 1 gives this info on Frank Abagnale.