Catch me if you can is a true story of a real fake by the name of Frank W. Abagnale, one of the world's most sought out criminals and impostors. Beginning his swindles at age sixteen, Frank quickly learned what it took to become a proper scam artist. Frank W. Abagnale started his ingenious scheme by becoming a co pilot for Pan American Airways and deadheading flights around the world to cash fraudulent checks which earned him assets at over $2.5 million dollars. Throughout the years Frank W. Abagnale used the counterfeit names of Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, Robert Black, Frank Williams, and Robert Monjo and posed as the supervising resident of the pediatrics unit in a Georgia hospital. He also forged a Harvard law degree and was hired as a lawyer for the state attorney general's office. Subsequently Frank conned his way into teaching a college sociology class with a counterfeit degree from Columbia University. Frank also masqueraded as a Pam Am representative to recruit a crew of stewardess and travel around Europe passing Pam Am expense checks. Frank's adventure comes to an end when he is caught in a supermarket in Montpellier, France by the gendarmes, who were the French police, and the Surete detective agents. Frank W. Abagnale is thrown in Perpignan's jail in France, and then later transferred to Malmo, a prison in Sweden. On the way back to the United States to await trail in his native land of New York, Frank escaped from the airline before it had landed and was thrown into another prison. Abagnale was ordered to serve twelve years in the Federal Correction Institution in Petersburg, Virginia. After serving four years of his sentence, Abagnale was paroled to Houston, Texas and was hired by the FBI to teach companies such as banks, airlines, and hotels how to detect counterfeit checks and prevent forgery.
I agree with the West Coast Review of Books in saying Catch me if you can is "a book that captivates from first page to last.