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Frank Abagnale: Q&A

In his youth, Abagnale was a master forger and imposter, cashing about $2.5 million in forged checks to finance his jet-setting lifestyle. He cowrote a book based on his adventures called Catch Me If You Can, prompting the Steven Spielberg movie of the same name.

By Daintry Duffy

December 01, 2003 — CSO — In his career, Frank Abagnale has been an airline pilot, a college professor, a lawyer and a pediatrician, and that was before his 21st birthday. In his youth, Abagnale was a master forger and imposter, cashing about $2.5 million in forged checks to finance his jet-setting lifestyle. When he was finally apprehended, he spent a total of five years in French, Swedish and U.S. prisons after which he cowrote a book based on his adventures called Catch Me If You Can , prompting the Steven Spielberg movie of the same name. Today, Abagnale has parlayed his knowledge of forgery into a successful consulting practice. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on check fraud, embezzlement and secure documents, and he lectures and consults extensively for the FBI. We recently spoke to Abagnale about the growing problem of identity theft and what CSOs should be doing to counter this rapidly spreading crime.

CSO: Identity theft is often thought of as just a crime against consumers. Is that accurate?

Frank Abagnale: Identity theft is a crime against consumers, businesses, financial institutions and retailers. In 2002, there were nearly 9.9 million victims of identity theft. Banks, credit card companies and retailers lost more than $47 billion that we can attribute directly to identity theft.

It's common for a bank or credit card company to write off a debt and then find out months later that it was caused by identity theft. Rather than report it as fraud, they simply write it off as a bad debt. Every security executive should be concerned about protecting the identity of his customers, clients, members and employees.

Everyone is in an uproar about the $87 billion [as the cost to rebuild] Iraq. Consider this: White-collar crime in America is now at $600 billion annually, almost twice the budget of the entire Defense Department. These are real losses in income and tax revenue that ultimately come out of consumers' pockets in the form of increases in fees, goods and services. The $87 billion is a deficit against the budget. The $600 billion comes directly out of the pocket of every man, woman and child in America. I think it's time we get concerned about white-collar crime.

What can security executives do to prevent their customers from being victimized? What precautions should they institute internally?

When we ask an embezzler how he accessed the company's e-mail or building, the most common answer is, "I was let go six months ago, but they never removed my privileges."