Unveiled: The Shocking Truth Behind the Real-Life Conman Who Inspired ‘Catch Me If You Can’
Kevin Winter/ImageDirect/Getty ImagesThe premiere of Catch Me If You Can in 2002. From left to right: Tom Hanks, Jennifer Garner, Steven Spielberg, Frank Abagnale Jr., and Leonardo DiCaprio .
According to Abagnale, during this purported long con, he flew more than one million miles, visited 26 countries, and cashed $2.5 million in bad checks. However, there’s no proof that most of this ever happened.
Alan C. Logan began investigating the true story behind Catch Me If You Can around 2020, though he’d had his doubts about Abagnale’s tales for years. He first saw the movie when it was released in 2002, and as he told WHYY-FM in 2021, “I remember just having this nagging feeling and that something just wasn’t quite right about it.”
When Logan set out to write The Greatest Hoax on Earth, he looked through old newspapers and public records in an attempt to verify Abagnale’s memoir and the events depicted onscreen. What he found was that Abagnale had seemingly exaggerated — or outright lied about — much of his story. There’s not even any proof that he took the Louisiana State Bar exam.
Logan also discovered that Abagnale’s most enthralling con — impersonating a commercial airline pilot — wasn’t nearly the years-long swindle he’d claimed. Instead, Logan told WHYY-FM, “What really happened was that, dressed as a TWA (Trans World Airlines) pilot, which he only did for a few weeks, he befriended a flight attendant called Paula Parks. He followed her all over the Eastern Seaboard, identified her work schedule through deceptive means, and essentially stalked the woman.”
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