Catch Me If You Can

parties on the same day, and the one had been a real cash ball.

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CHAPTER SEVEN. 
How to Tour Europe on a
Felony a Day
 
I developed a scam for every occasion and sometimes I waived the occasion. I
modified the American banking system to suit myself and siphoned money out of bank
vaults like a coon drains an egg. When I jumped the border into Mexico in late 1967,1 had
illicit cash assets of nearly $500,000 and several dozen bank officials had crimson
derrieres.
It was practically all done with numbers, a statistical shell game with the pea always
in my pocket.
Look at one of your own personal checks. There’s a check number in the upper right-
hand corner, right? Thaf s probably the only one you notice, and you notice it only if you
keep an accurate check register. Most people don’t even know their own account number,
and while a great number of bank employees may be able to decipher the bank code
numbers across the bottom of a check, very few scan a check that closely.
In the 1960s bank security was very lax, at least as far as I was concerned. It was my
experience, when presenting a personal check, drawn on a Miami bank, say, to another
Miami bank, about the only security precaution taken by the teller was a glance at the
number in the upper right-hand corner. The higher that number, the more readily
acceptable the check. It was as if the teller was telling herself or himself, “Ah-hah, check
number 2876-boy, this guy has been with his bank a long time. This check’s gotta be
okay.”
So I’m in an East Coast city, Boston, for example. I open an account in the Bean
State Bank for $200, using the name Jason Parker and a boardinghouse address. Within a
few days, I receive 200 personalized checks, numbered 1-200 consecutively in the upper
right-hand corner, my name and address in the left-hand corner and, of course, that string
of odd little numbers across the left-hand bottom edge. The series of numbers commenced
with the numbers 01, since Boston is located within the First Federal Reserve District.
The most successful cattle rustlers in the Old West were experts at brand blotting and
brand changing. I was an expert in check number blotting and changing, using press-on
numbers and press-on magnetic-tape numbers.
When I finished with check number 1, it was check number 3100, and the series of
numbers above the left-hand bottom edge started with the number 12. Otherwise, the
check looks the same.
Now I walk into the Old Settlers Farm and Home Savings Association, which is just
a mile from the Bean State Bank. “I want to open a savings account,” I tell the clerk who
greets me. “My wife tells me we’re keeping too much money in a checking account.”
“All right, sir, how much do you wish to deposit?” he or she asks. Let’s say it’s a he.
Bank dummies are divided equally among the sexes.
“Oh, $6,500,1 guess,” I reply, writing out a check to the OSFHSA. The teller takes
the check and glances at the number in the upper right-hand corner. He also notices it’s

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drawn on the Bean State Bank. He smiles. “All right, Mr. Parker. Now, there is a three-day
waiting period before you can make any withdrawals. We have to allow time for your
check to clear, and since it’s an in-town check the three-day waiting period applies.”
“I understand,” I reply. I do, too. I’ve already ascertained that’s the waiting period
enforced by savings and loan institutions for in-town checks.
I wait six days and on the morning of the sixth day I return to Old Settlers. But I
deliberately seek out a different teller. I hand him my passbook. “I need to withdraw
$5,500,” I say. If the teller had questioned the amount of the withdrawal, I would have
said that I was buying a house or given some other plausible reason. But few savings and
loan bank tellers pry into a customer’s personal affairs.
This one didn’t. He checked the account file. The account was six days old. The in-
town check had obviously cleared. He returned my passbook with a cashier’s check for
$5,500.
I cashed it at the Bean State Bank and left town… before my check for $6,500
returned from Los Angeles, where the clearing-house bank computer had routed it.
I invested in another I-Tek camera and printing press and did the same thing with my
phony Pan Am expense checks. I made up different batches for passing in different areas
of the country, although all the checks were purportedly payable by Chase Manhattan
Bank, New York.
New York is in the Second Federal Reserve District. Bona fide checks on banks in
New York all have a series of numerals beginning with the number 02. But all the phony
checks I passed on the East Coast, or in northeastern or southeastern states, were routed
first to San Francisco or Los Angeles. All the phony checks I passed in the Southwest,
Northwest or along the West Coast were first routed to Philadelphia, Boston or some other
point across the continent.
My numbers game was the perfect system for floats and stalls. I always had a week’s
running time before the hounds picked up the spoor. I learned later that I was the first
check swindler to use the routing numbers racket. It drove bankers up the wall. They
didn’t know what the hell was going on. They do now, and they owe me.
I worked my schemes overtime, all over the nation, until I decided I was just too hot
to cool down. I had to leave the country. And I decided I could worry about a passport in
Mexico as fretfully as I could in Richmond or Seattle, since all I needed to visit Mexico
was a visa. I obtained one from the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio, using the name
Frank Williams and presenting myself as a Pan Am pilot, and deadheaded to Mexico City
on an Aero-Mexico jet.
I did not take the entire proceeds of my crime spree with me. Like a dog with access
to a butcher-shop bone box and forty acres of soft ground, I buried my loot all over the
United States, stashing stacks of cash in bank safe-deposit boxes from coast to coast and
from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border.
I did take some $50,000 with me into Mexico, concealed in thin sheafs in the lining
of my suitcases and the linings of my jackets. A good customs officer could have turned
up the cash speedily, but I didn’t have to go through customs. I was wearing my Pan Am

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uniform and was waived along with the AeroMexico crew.
I stayed in Mexico City a week. Then I met a Pan Am stewardess, enjoying a five-
day holiday in Mexico, and accepted her invitation to go to Acapulco for a weekend. We
were airborne when she suddenly groaned and said a naughty word. “What’s the matter?”
I asked, surprised to hear such language from such lovely lips.
“I meant to cash my paycheck at the airport,” she said. “I’ve got exactly three pesos
in my purse. Oh, well, I guess the hotel will cash it.”
“I’ll cash it, if it’s not too much,” I said. “I’m sending my own check off tonight for
deposit, and I can just run it through my bank. How much is it?”
I really didn’t care how much cash was involved. A real Pan Am check! I wanted it. I
got it for $288.15, and stowed it carefully away. I never did cash it, although it netted me a
fortune.
I liked Acapulco. It teemed with beautiful people, most of them rich, famous or on
the make for something or other, sometimes all three. We stayed at a hotel frequented by
airline crews, but I never felt in jeopardy. Acapulco is not a place one goes to talk shop.
I stayed on after the stewardess returned to her base in Miami. And the hotel manager
became friendly with me, so friendly that I decided to sound him out on my dilemma.
He joined me at dinner one night and since he seemed in an especially affable mood,
I decided to make a try then and there. “Pete, I’m in a helluva jam,” I ventured.
“The hell you are!” he exclaimed in concerned tones.
“Yeah,” I replied. “My supervisor in New York just called me. He wants me to go to
London on the noon plane from Mexico City tomorrow and pick up a flight that’s being
held there because the pilot is sick.”
Pete grinned. “That’s a jam? I should have your troubles.”
I shook my head. “The thing is, Pete, I don’t have my passport with me. I left it in
New York and I’m supposed to have it with me all the time. I can’t make it back to New
York in time to get my passport and get to London on schedule. And if the super learns
I’m here without a passport, he’ll fire me. What the hell am I gonna do, Pete?”
He whistled. “Yeah, you are in a jam, aren’t you?” His features took on a musing
look, and then he nodded. “I don’t know that this will work, but have you ever heard of a
woman named Kitty Corbett?”
I hadn’t and said so. “Well, she’s a writer on Mexican affairs, an old dame. She’s
been down here twenty or thirty years and is real respected. They say she has clout from
the Presidential Palace in Mexico City to Washington, D.C., the White House even, I
understand. I believe it, too.” He grinned. “The thing is, that’s her at the table by the
window. Now, I know she plays mamma to every down-and-out American who puts a con
on her, and she loves to do favors for anybody who seeks her out wanting something.
Makes her feel like the queen mother, I guess. Anyway, let’s go over and buy her a drink,
put some sweet lines on her and cry a little. Maybe she can come up with an answer.”
Kitty Corbett was a gracious old woman. And sharp. After a few minutes, she smiled

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at Pete. “Okay, innkeeper, what’s up? You never sit down with me unless you want
something. What is it this time?”
Pete threw up his hands and laughed. “I don’t want a thing, honest! But Frank here
has a problem. Tell her, Frank.”
I told her virtually the same story I’d put on Pete, except I went a little heavier on the
melodrama. She looked at me when I finished. “You need a passport real bad, I’d say,” she
commented.
“Trouble is, you’ve got one. If s just in the wrong place. You can’t have two
passports, you know. Thaf s illegal.”
“I know,” I said, grimacing. “That worries me, too. But I can’t lose this job. It might
be years before another airline picked me up, if at all. I was on Pan Am’s waiting list for
three years.” I paused, then exclaimed, “Flying jet liners is all I ever wanted to do!”
Kitty Corbett nodded sympathetically, lost in thought.
Then she pursed her mouth. “Pete, get me a telephone over here.”
Pete signaled and a waiter brought a telephone to the table and plugged it into a
nearby wall jack. Kitty Corbett picked it up, jiggled the hook and then began talking to the
operator in Spanish. It required several minutes, but she was put through to whomever she
was calling.
“Sonja? Kitty Corbett here,” she said. “Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask…” She went on
and detailed my predicament and then listened as the party on the other end replied.
“I know all that, Sonja,” she said. “And I’ve got it figured out. Just issue him a
temporary passport, just as you would if his had been lost or stolen. Hell, when he gets
back to New York he can tear up the temporary passport, or tear up the old one and get a
new one.”
She listened again for a minute, then held her hand over the receiver and looked at
me. “You don’t happen to have your birth certificate with you, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I carry it in my wallet. It’s a little worn, but still legible.”
Kitty Corbett nodded and turned again to the phone. “Yes, Sonja, he has a birth
certificate… You think you can handle it? Great! You’re a love and I owe you. See you
next week.”
She hung up and smiled. “Well, Frank, if you can get to the American Consulate in
Mexico City by ten o’clock tomorrow, Sonja Gundersen, the assistant consul, will issue
you a temporary passport. You’ve lost yours, understand? And if you tell anyone about
this, I’ll kill you.”
I kissed her and ordered a bottle of the best champagne. I even had a glass myself.
Then I called the airport and found there was a flight leaving in an hour. I made a
reservation and turned to Pete. “Listen, I’m going to leave a lot of my stuff here. I don’t
have time to pack. Have someone pack what I leave and store it in your office, and I’ll
pick it up in a couple of weeks, maybe sooner. I’m going to try and come back through
here.”

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I stuffed one suitcase with my uniform and one suit, and my money. Pete had a cab
waiting when I went down to the lobby. I really liked the guy, and I wished there were
some way to thank him.
I thought of a way. I laid one of my phony Pan Am checks on him. On the hotel he
managed, anyway.
I cashed another one at the airport before boarding the flight to Mexico City. In
Mexico City, I stowed my bag in a locker after changing into my Pan Am pilot’s garb and
walked into Miss Gundersen’s office at 9:45 a.m.
Sonja Gundersen was a crisp, starched blonde and she didn’t waste any time. “Your
birth certificate, please.”
I took it from my wallet and handed it to her. She scanned it and looked at me. “I
thought Kitty said your name was Frank Williams. This says your name is Frank W.
Abagnale, Jr.”
I smiled. “It is. Frank William Abagnale, Jr. You know Kitty. She had a little too
much champagne last night. She kept introducing me to all her friends as Frank Williams,
too. But I thought she gave you my full name.”
“She may have,” agreed Miss Gundersen. “I had trouble hearing a lot of what she
said. These damned Mexican telephones. Anyway you’re obviously a Pan Am pilot, and