Frank Abagnale

The former police chief of Houston once said of me: \"Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it \'U.R. Hooked\' and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver\'s license for identification.\"

Remember what being an adult is: It has nothing to do with money or awards.

I made a lot of exits through side doors, down fire escapes or over rooftops. I abandoned more wardrobes in the course of five years than most men acquire in a lifetime. I was slipperier than a buttered escargot.

I always tell people what I did 50 years ago as a teenager is now 4,000 times easier to do today than when I did it. Technology breeds crime - it always has and it always will. There\'s always going to be people willing to use technology in a negative, self-serving way. So today it\'s much easier, whether it\'s forging checks or getting information. People go on Facebook and tell you what car they drive, their mother\'s name, where you are going on vacation, where you\'ve been on vacation. There\'s nothing you can\'t research in a matter of a couple of minutes and find out about someone.

I live a much better life without having to worry about people chasing me. I spent five years in prison from 21 to 26, which is probably the best part of my youth behind bars. I was in some very bad prisons overseas as well. It was not a fun life, it was a very lonely life in reality. I was a smart enough kid to know that I was going to get caught. The law sometimes sleeps, but the law never dies. I knew it was just a matter of time. I would be caught and I\'d get punished and face the consequences.

I look at my life today at 69 and I think about all the things that have happened after all my imprisonment. We truly live in an amazing country, America is where you can do things and pay your debt back to society and literally change your life if you want to.

There are many ways to manipulate chip cards. For example, a number of years ago when American Express issued the first chip card, criminals would take a small hammer with a little device and bang the chip to destroy it without hurting the physical appearance of the card.

A lot of times, when I met somebody and took them out on a date, I obviously didn\'t tell them my background, because I didn\'t think I\'d see them but once or twice.

I went from 198 pounds to 109 while I was in prison in France, and I had to tie my clothes on with rope.

You fight technology with technology, so you have to stay one step ahead of the criminal. It\'s very much a chess game - they make a move, you have to make a move.

Christopher Walken and Nathalie Baye played my parents so well that I really thought I was in my living room at Christmas. My mother couldn\'t have been played more correctly.

Too many of us are vulnerable, and I look forward to working with AARP to advise people about the safest ways to conduct their financial transactions and manage social media.

One of the most popular scams is what they call account takeover. You write me a check, and I simply go online to a check-printing service and order 200 checks with your account information.

I never use debit cards. I only use credit cards. This way, if someone does get my account number... and charges $1 million, by federal law, my liability is zero.

I\'m glad I\'m a draw. People know that, not only am I the guy that did it, I spent 40 years on the other side.

We\'re coming down to an extremely unethical society. Very few colleges offer courses in ethics, and very few companies have a code of conduct or code of ethics.

Had I been older - maybe 25 or 30 - I would have never tried half the things I did because I would have rationalized everything and never did it.

I was always accepted at par value. I wore the uniform of a Pan Am pilot; therefore, I must be a Pan Am pilot.

It is amazing the information we give away. We make it easier and easier for criminals.

We should be very concerned: if identity theft is so simple to do, what\'s to stop me from entering this country and assuming the identity of someone else for the sole purpose of living here illegally for terrorist reasons? That alone would be a concern.

I have never witnessed, nor will I live long enough to witness, a more simplistic crime than me stealing your identity.

If you look at any successful professional - a salesperson, a marketer, a real estate agent, a trader - they all have the same qualities as the con man. The only difference is that one side uses their talents in the right direction and the con man is taking the easy way out.

If I had walked into a dry cleaning store, and I had looked over, and the register drawer was open with money inside, I wouldn\'t have taken it.

I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.

When I look back at my life now, I\'m not amazed by what I did at 16 to 21.

I have to be honest with you: When the FBI let me out of prison early to advise the agency on preventing fraud, I wasn\'t a changed person. I wasn\'t rehabilitated. But when I started working with the FBI, one of the most ethical groups of men and women in the world, I couldn\'t help but have some of that character rub off on me.

I make my home in Tulsa.

Had I been older, I would\'ve never been able to pull it off because I would\'ve analyzed it to death. When I was 16, there was no such thing as \'what if.\'

Unlike most divorces, where the children were usually the first to know, my parents were very good about keeping that a secret.

I don\'t do online banking.