What is Frank Abagnale’s Net Worth?
Frank Abagnale, a security consultant, has a net worth of $10 million. He gained notoriety for his past as a check forger and impostor, claiming to have taken on eight different identities. His story inspired the film “Catch Me If You Can,” with Leonardo Dicaprio portraying Abagnale.
Early Life and Crime Spree
Frank Abagnale was born in 1948 in Bronxville, New York to a French mother and Italian American father. His parents divorced when he was 16, and he turned to a life of crime. He started with petty crimes and moved on to more sophisticated fraud tactics, including writing bad checks and impersonating everyone from doctors to pilots.
Arrests and Convictions
Abagnale was arrested multiple times, including for forgery and car theft. He was extradited to Sweden where he was convicted of gross fraud by forgery and served two months in prison. He was banned from returning to Sweden for eight years and required to compensate his Swedish victims, which he never did. He was later arrested in the U.S for passing bad checks and sentenced to ten years in prison, with an additional two years for escaping from jail.
Post-Prison Life
After his release, Abagnale struggled to find steady employment due to his criminal past. He posed as a pilot again in 1974 to obtain a job at a summer children’s camp in Texas, where he was arrested for stealing cameras from his co-workers. He falsified his resume to reflect that he had worked with the Los Angeles Police Department and Scotland Yard. He eventually decided to turn his life around and settled with his family in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Frank Abagnale’s Career and Accomplishments
After successfully conning people and businesses out of millions of dollars, Frank Abagnale Jr. was arrested and sentenced to prison. However, he eventually turned his life around and began working as an informant on fraud issues for the FBI for over 30 years. He also opened his own company, Abagnale & Associates, which educates people on how to avoid becoming a victim of fraud. Abagnale has written several books on fraud prevention, including The Art of the Steal and Stealing Your Life.
In 2015, Abagnale was named the AARP Fraud Watch Ambassador, where he helps educate consumers about protecting themselves from identity theft and cybercrime. He also hosts the AARP podcast “The Perfect Scam” and has appeared in the media numerous times, including three appearances on “The Tonight Show” and a regular slot on the British network TV series “The Secret Cabaret” in the ’90s.
Abagnale’s life story was turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 2002, titled “Catch Me If You Can,” featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as Abagnale. The real Frank Abagnale made a cameo in the film, playing a French police officer taking DiCaprio into custody.
Family Life of Frank Abagnale
Frank Abagnale and his wife Kelly have three sons. Once their children left home for college, Kelly proposed that they should move out of Tulsa. The couple currently resides in Charleston, South Carolina.
