Catch Me If You Can

by Frank W. Abagnale

  “Oh, yes, sir, we stay at the Skyway Motel if it’s going to be less than twenty-four hours,” she responded, suddenly all aid and assistance.

  “It will be,” I said.

  “Well, it’s only a short distance,” she said. “You can wait on the crew bus or you can just take a cab over there. Are you going to take a cab?”

  “I think so,” I replied. I knew I was going to take a cab. I wasn’t about to get on a bus full of real Pan Am flight people.

  “Wait a minute, then,” she said and stepped over to her station. She opened a drawer and took out a claim-check-sized card and handed it to me. “Just give that to any of the cab drivers out front. Have a good stay.”

  Damned if it wasn’t a ticket for a free cab ride, good with any Miami cab firm. Airline people lived in the proverbial land of milk and honey, I thought as I walked out of the terminal. I liked milk and I knew I was in the right hive when I checked in at the motel. I registered under my phony name and put down General Delivery, New York, as my address. The registration clerk took the card, glanced at it, then stamped “airline crew” in red ink across its face.

  “I’ll be checking out in the morning,” I said.

  She nodded. “All right. You can sign this now if you want, and you won’t have to stop by here in the morning.”

  “I’ll just sign it in the morning,” I replied. “I might run up some charges tonight.” She shrugged and filed the card.

  I didn’t see any Pan Am crewmen around the motel. If there were any around the pool, where a lively crowd was assembled, I drew no attention from them. In my room, I changed into casual attire and called the Eastern stewardess at the number she’d given me.

  She picked me up in her friend’s car and we had a ball in the Miami Beach night spots. I didn’t put any moves on her, but I wasn’t being gallant. I was so turned on by the success of my first adventure as a bogus birdman that I forgot about it. By the time I remembered, she’d dropped me at the Skyway and gone home.

  I checked out at 5:30 the next morning. There was only a sleepy-faced night clerk on duty when I entered the lobby. He took my key and gave me my room bill to sign.

  “Can I get a check cashed?” I asked as I signed the tab.

  “Sure, do you have your ID card?” he said.

  I handed it to him and wrote out a check for $100, payable to the hotel. He copied the fictitious employee number from my fake ID card onto the back of the check and handed me back my ID and five $20 bills. I took a cab to the airport and an hour later deadheaded to Dallas on a Braniff flight. The Braniff flight officers were not inquisitive at all, but I had a few tense moments en route. I wasn’t aware that Pan Am didn’t fly out of Dallas. I was aware that deadheading pilots were always supposed to be on business.

  “What the hell are you going to Dallas for?” the co-pilot asked in casually curious tones. I was searching for a reply when he gave me the answer. “You in on a charter or something?”

  “Yeah, freight,” I said, knowing Pan Am had worldwide freight service, and the subject was dropped.

  I stayed overnight at a motel used by flight crews of several airlines, stung the inn with a $100 bum check when I left in the morning and deadheaded to San Francisco immediately. It was a procedural pattern I followed, with variations, for the next two years. Modus operandi, the cops call it.

  Mine was a ready-made scam, one for which the airlines, motels and hotels set themselves up. The hotels and motels around metropolitan or international airports considered it just good business, of course, when they entered into agreements with as many airlines as possible to house transit flight crews. It assured the hostelries of at least a minimum rate of occupancy, and no doubt most of the operators felt the presence of the pilots and stewardesses would attract other travelers seeking lodging. The airlines considered it a desirable arrangement because the carriers were guaranteed room space for their flight crews, even during conventions and other festive affairs when rooms were at a premium. I know from numerous conversations on the subject that the flight crews liked the plan whereby the airlines were billed directly for lodging and allotted meals. It simplified their expense-account bookkeeping.

  The deadheading arrangement between airlines everywhere in the world was also a system based on good business practices. It was more than a courtesy. It afforded a maximum of mobility for pilots and co-pilots needed in emergency or essential situations.

  However, supervision, auditing or other watchdog procedures concerning the agreements and arrangements were patently, at least during that period, lax, sloppy or nonexistent. Airport security, understandably, was minimal at the time. Terrorist raids on terminals and plane hijackings were yet to become the vogue. Airports, small cities that they are in themselves, had a low crime ratio, with theft the common problem.

  No one, apparently, save under extreme circumstances, ever went behind the pink “jump” forms and checked out the requesting pilot’s bona fides. The deadheading form consisted of an original and two copies. I was given the original as a boarding pass and I gave that to the stewardess in charge of boarding. I knew the operations clerk always called the FAA tower to inform the tower operators that such-and-such flight would have a jump passenger aboard, but I didn’t know that a copy of the pink pass was given the FAA. Presumably, the third copy was kept in the operations files of the particular airline. An airline official who made a statement to police concerning my escapades offered what seemed to him a logical explanation:

  “You simply don’t expect a man in a pilot’s uniform, with proper credentials and obvious knowledge of jump procedures, to be an impostor, dammit!”

  But I have always suspected that the majority of the jump forms I filled out ended up in the trash, original and both copies.

  There were other factors, too, that weighed the odds in my favor. I was not at first a big operator. I limited the checks I cashed at motels, hotels and airline counters to $100, and not infrequently I was told there wasn’t enough cash on hand to handle a check for more than $50 or $75. It always took several days for one of my worthless checks to traverse the clearing-house routes to New York, and by the time the check was returned stamped “insufficient funds,” I was a long time gone. The fact that I had a legitimate (on the face of it, at least) account had a bearing on my success also. The bank didn’t return my checks with the notation “worthless,” “fraudulent” or “forgery.” They merely sent them back marked “insufficient funds to cover.”

  Airlines and hostelries do a volume business by check. Most of the checks returned to them because of insufficient funds aren’t attempts to defraud. It’s usually a bad case of the shorts on the part of the people who tendered the checks. In most instances, such persons are located and their checks are made good. In many cases involving checks I passed, the checks were first placed for collection before any attempt to locate me was made through Pan Am. In many other instances, I’m sure, the victimized business simply wrote off the loss and didn’t pursue the matter.

  Those who did usually turned the matter over to local police, which further aided and abetted me. Very few police departments, if any, have a hot-check division or bunco squad that is adequately staffed, not even metropolitan forces.

  And no detective on any police force is burdened with a case load heavier than the officer assigned to the check-fraud detail. Fraudulent check swindles are the most common of crimes, and the professional paperhanger is the wiliest of criminals, the hardest to nab. That’s true today and it was true then, and it’s no reflection on the abilities or determination of the officers involved. Their success ratio is admirable when you consider the number of complaints they handle daily. Such policemen usually work on priorities. Say a team of detectives is working on a bum-check operation involving phony payroll checks that’s bilking local merchants of $10,000 weekly, obviously the handiwork of a ring. They also have a complaint from a jeweler who lost a $3,000 ring to a hot-check artist. And one from a banker whose bank cashed a
$7,500 counterfeit cashier’s check. Plus a few dozen cases involving resident forgers. Now they’re handed a complaint from a motel manager who says he lost $100 to a con artist posing as an airline pilot. The offense occurred two weeks past.

  So what do the detectives do? They make the routine gestures, that’s what. They ascertain the man’s New York address is a phony. They learn Pan Am has no such pilot on its payroll. Maybe they go so far as to determine the impostor bilked the one airline out of a free ride to Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles or some other distant point. They put a message to whichever city is appropriate on the police teletype and pigeonhole the complaint for possible future reference, that’s what they do. They’ve done as much as they could.

  And like the bumblebee, I kept flying and making honey on the side.

  So it’s not too amazing that I could operate so freely and brazenly when you consider the last two factors in my hypothesis. The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) did not exist as a police tool during the period. Had I had to contend with the computerized police link, with its vast and awesome reservoir of criminal facts and figures, my career would probably have been shortened by years. And lastly, I was pioneering a scam that was so implausible, so seemingly impossible and so brass-balled blatant that it worked.

  In the last months of my adventures, I ran into a Continental captain with whom I had deadheaded a couple of times. It was a tense moment for me, but he dispelled it with the warmth of his greeting. Then he laughed and said, “You know, Frank, I was talking to a Delta stewardess a couple of months ago and she said you were a phony. I told her that was bullshit, that you’d handled the controls of my bird. What’d you do to that girl, boy, kick her out of bed?”

  My adventures. The first few years that’s exactly what they were for me, adventures. Adventures in crime, of course, but adventures nonetheless.

  I kept a notebook, a surreptitious journal in which I jotted down phrases, technical data, miscellaneous information, names, dates, places, telephone numbers, thoughts and a collection of other data I thought was necessary or might prove helpful.

  It was a combination log, textbook, little black book, diary and airline bible, and the longer I operated, the thicker it became with entries. One of the first notations in the notebook is “glide scopes.” The term was mentioned on my second deadhead flight and I jotted it down as a reminder to learn what it meant. Glide scopes are runway approach lights used as landing guides. The journal is crammed with all sorts of trivia that was invaluable to me in my sham role. If you’re impersonating a pilot it helps to know things like the fuel consumption of a 707 in flight (2,000 gallons an hour), that planes flying west maintain altitudes at even-numbered levels (20,000 feet, 24,000 feet, etc.) while east-bound planes fly at odd-numbered altitudes (19,000 feet, 27,000 feet, etc.), or that all airports are identified by code (LAX, Los Angeles; JFK or LGA, New York, etc.).

  Little things mean a lot to a big phony. The names of every flight crew I met, the type of equipment they flew, their route, their airline and their base went into the book as some of the more useful data.

  Like I’d be deadheading on a National flight.

  “Where you guys out of?”

  “Oh, we’re Miami-based.”

  A sneak look into my notebook, then: “Hey, how’s Red doing? One of you’s gotta know Red O’Day. How is that Irishman?”

  All three knew Red O’Day. “Hey, you know Red, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’ve deadheaded a couple of times with Red. He’s a great guy.”

  Such exchanges reinforced my image as a pilot and usually averted the mild cross-examinations to which I’d been subjected at first.

  Just by watching and listening I became adept in other things that enhanced my pose. After the second flight, whenever I was offered a pair of earphones with which to listen in on airline traffic, I always accepted, although a lot of pilots preferred a squawk box, in which case no earphones were needed.

  I had to improvise a lot. Whenever I’d deadhead into a city not used by Pan Am, such as Dallas, and didn’t know which motels or hotels were used by airline crews, I’d simply walk up to the nearest airline ticket counter. “Listen, I’m here to work a charter that’s coming in tomorrow. Where do the airlines stay around here?” I’d ask.

  I was always supplied with the name or names of a nearby inn or inns. I’d pick one, go there and register, and I was never challenged when I asked that Pan Am be billed for my lodging. All they asked was Pan Am’s address in New York.

  At intervals I’d hole up in a city for two or three weeks for logistics purposes. I’d open an account in, say, a San Diego bank, or a Houston bank, giving the address of an apartment I’d rented for the occasion (I always rented a pad that could be had on a month-to-month basis), and when my little box of personalized checks arrived, I would pack up and take to the airways again.

  I knew I was a hunted man, but I was never sure how closely I was being pursued or who was in the posse those first two years. Any traveling con man occasionally gets the jitters, certain he’s about to be collared, and I was no exception. Whenever I got a case of the whibbies, I’d go to earth like a fox.

  Or with a fox. Some of the girls I dated came on pretty strong, making it apparent they thought I was marriage material. I had a standing invitation from several to visit them in their homes for a few days and get to know their parents. When I felt the need to hide out, I’d drop in on the nearest one and stay for a few days or a week, resting and relaxing. I hit it off well with the parents in every instance. None of them ever found out they were aiding and abetting a juvenile delinquent.

  When I felt the situation was cool again, I’d take off, promising the particular girl that I’d return soon and we’d talk about our future. I never went back, of course. I was afraid of marriage.

  Besides, my mother would not have permitted it. I was only seventeen.

  CHAPTER FOUR. If I’m a Kid Doctor, Where’s My Jar of Lollipops?

  National Flight 106, New Orleans to Miami. A routine deadheading deception. I was now polished in my pettifoggery as a pilot without portfolio. I had grown confident, even cocky, in my pre-empting of cockpit jump seats. After two hundred duplicitous flights, I occupied a jump seat with the same assumption of a Wall Street broker in his seat on the stock exchange.

  I even felt a little nostalgic as I stepped into the flight cabin of the DC-8. My first fraudulent flight had been on a National carrier to Miami. Now, two years later, I was returning to Miami, and again on a National jet. I thought it appropriate.

  “Hi, Frank Williams. Nice of you to give me a lift,” I said with acquired poise, and shook hands all around. Captain Tom Wright, aircraft commander, forties, slightly rumpled look of competence. First Officer Gary Evans, early thirties, dapper, with amused features. Flight Engineer Bob Hart, late twenties, skinny, serious demeanor, new uniform, a rookie. Nice guys. The kind I liked to soft-con.

  A stewardess brought me a cup of coffee as we taxied toward the runway. I sipped the brew and watched the plane traffic on the strip ahead. It was late Saturday night, moonless, and the aircraft, distinguishable only by their interior lights and flickering exhausts, dipped and soared like lightning bugs. I never ceased to be fascinated by air traffic, night or day.

  Wright was apparently not one to use the squawk box. All three officers had headsets, and none of the three had offered me a set for monitoring. If you weren’t offered, you didn’t ask. The cockpit of a passenger plane is like the captain’s bridge on a ship. Protocol is rigidly observed, if that’s the tone set by the skipper. Tom Wright operated his jet by the book, it seemed. I didn’t feel slighted. The conversation between the three and the tower was clipped and cursory, rather uninteresting, in fact, as most such one-sided exchanges are.

  Suddenly it was real interesting, so interesting that I started to pucker at both ends.

  Wright and Evans exchanged arch-browed, quizzical looks, and Hart was suddenly regarding me with solemn-
eyed intensity. Then Wright twisted around to face me. “Do you have your Pan Am identification card?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said and handed it to him, stomach quaking as Wright studied the artistic fake. “This is National 106 back to tower… uh, yes, I have an ID card here… Pan Am… looks fine… Employee number? Uh, three-five-zero-niner-niner… Uh-huh… Uh, yeah. M-mm, just a moment.”

  He turned again to me. “Do you have your FAA license?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, attempting to act puzzled and keep my bladder under control. It was bulging like a Dutch dike at high tide.

  Wright examined the forgery closely. He was the first real pilot to inspect the illicit license. He scrutinized it with the intensity of an art expert judging the authenticity of a Gauguin. Then: “Uh, yeah. FAA license, number zero-seven-five-three-six-six-eight-zero-five… Yes… mul-tiengine… check-out ATR… Looks fine to me… I see nothing wrong with it… Uh, yes, six foot, brown hair, brown eyes… Okay, you got it.”

  He twisted and handed back my ID card and the purported license, his face reflecting a mixture of chagrin and apology. “I don’t know what that was all about,” he said with a shrug, and did not ask me if I had any ideas on the subject.

  I did, but I didn’t volunteer any of them. I tried to convince myself that nothing was amiss, that the tower operator in New Orleans was just overly officious, or doing something he thought he should be doing. Maybe, I told myself, there was an FAA regulation requiring such an inquiry and the tower operator was the first to observe the rule in my experiences, but that didn’t wash. It had clearly been an unusual incident for Tom Wright.

  The three officers seemed to have dismissed the matter. They asked the usual questions and I gave the usual answers. I took part when the conversation was industry-oriented, listened politely when the three talked of their families. I was nervous all the way to Miami, my insides as tightly coiled as a rattler in a prickly pear patch.