Frank Abagnale quotes
Born
April 27, 1948, Bronxville, New York, U.S
Occupation
Security consultant.
Frank Abagnale is an American security consultant known for his history as a former con man. Abagnale’s life story inspired the feature film Catch Me If You Can (2002).
There is no technology today that cannot be defeated by social engineering.
– Frank Abagnale
The truth is, your identity already has been stolen.
– Frank Abagnale
I owe a debt to my country 800 times greater than I could ever repay.
– Frank Abagnale
I think I was so successful, not because I was brilliant, but because I was so young. I had no fear of consequences.
– Frank Abagnale
Criminals know that if they stay under certain thresholds, nobody is going to come after them.
– Frank Abagnale
If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been ‘Catch Me In Two Days’.
– Frank Abagnale
I wasn’t a Pan Am pilot or any other kind of pilot.
– Frank Abagnale
The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it opens the door to many crimes, so you have to stay ahead of it.
– Frank Abagnale
Had I been older, I would’ve never been able to pull it off because I would’ve analyzed it to death. When I was 16, there was no such thing as ‘what if.’
– Frank Abagnale
It’s about taking the time to research and think things out. Honest people and criminals do the same thing; just the direction, good or bad, is different.
– Frank Abagnale
You have to be very limited in who you give your social security number to.
– Frank Abagnale
You have to think a little smarter, be proactive, not reactive.
– Frank Abagnale
I don’t use a debit card. The safest thing is a credit card because you’re using the bank’s money. If someone accesses your information, they are stealing the bank’s money, not yours.
– Frank Abagnale
People have found very significant and simple ways to cheat their employer and get money out of their employers, and many companies lack good internal controls.
– Frank Abagnale
The front of a cheque alone gives someone enough information to steal your identity.
– Frank Abagnale
If I had been brilliant or a genius, I wouldn’t have needed to break the law just to survive.
– Frank Abagnale
I teach ethics at the FBI academy, which is ironic.
– Frank Abagnale
It’s amazing how much information we share in social media, then we wonder why people steal our identity.
– Frank Abagnale
If you tell me your name and date of birth, that’s all I need to steal your identity.
– Frank Abagnale
Whether you’re earning $7 an hour or $700,000 a year, it’s very important to protect your credit rating.
– Frank Abagnale
There’s no such thing as a foolproof system. That idea fails to take into account the creativity of fools.
– Frank Abagnale
Mostly, cybercriminals are motivated to commit crime for financial gain.
– Frank Abagnale
Banks are so protected from liability they would have to really do something that was their mistake in order for them to be liable for it. Banks don’t look at signatures. They’re processing millions of checks and they have very little liability.
– Frank Abagnale
I would have thought technology would have made it harder to do what I did.
– Frank Abagnale
One of the most popular scams is what they call account takeover. You write me a check, and I simply go online to a check-printing service and order 200 checks with your account information.
– Frank Abagnale
Unlike most divorces, where the children were usually the first to know, my parents were very good about keeping that a secret.
– Frank Abagnale
If I check into a hotel, a lot of times, they know who I am.
– Frank Abagnale
We buy into the computer, and everything that comes from the computer, we believe to be the truth.
– Frank Abagnale
If you happen to tell me where you were born, your date of birth and that kind of information, then I’m 98 percent of the way to stealing your identity.
– Frank Abagnale
Most people are fascinated by what I did as a teenager, but when I look back at my life, I don’t think very much about those years. I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.
– Frank Abagnale
A real man loves and respects his wife and is not only a good father but a man that his kids want to call ‘Daddy.’
– Frank Abagnale
We all grow up. Hopefully, we get wiser. Age brings wisdom, and fatherhood changes one’s life completely.
– Frank Abagnale
One thing I’ve found is that if you educate and show people the risk, they will do something about it.
– Frank Abagnale
Everything I have today was because of the love of a woman.
– Frank Abagnale
You have to be smarter and a wiser businessperson and consumer. You have to learn to protect yourself through education.
– Frank Abagnale
I was just a guy who ran away from home at 16 because my parents were getting a divorce and the judge was making me choose which parent to live with. I didn’t want to make that choice. I ended up in New York City.
– Frank Abagnale
People say that life is short, but it isn’t short. It’s very long.
– Frank Abagnale
I was always accepted at par value. I wore the uniform of a Pan Am pilot; therefore, I must be a Pan Am pilot.
– Frank Abagnale
I always knew I’d get caught sooner or later. And I knew I would end up going to prison.
– Frank Abagnale
You cannot rely on the police, you cannot rely on the government, you cannot rely on the bank to protect you.
– Frank Abagnale
I spent five years of my youth in prison – some very bad prisons.
– Frank Abagnale
I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.
– Frank Abagnale
My father was never really the con-man type that the film shows him to be: he was straight as an arrow, though he did have problems with the IRS.
– Frank Abagnale
Most people don’t recognize me, but they know my name. TSA people rarely recognize my name, ironically, and they are the security people.
– Frank Abagnale
A real man loves his wife, and places his family as the most important thing in life. Nothing has brought me more peace and content in life than simply being a good husband and father.
– Frank Abagnale
You can sit in a room and create anything you want on a laptop. That’s why the real con men are gone.
– Frank Abagnale
Technology breeds crime and we are constantly trying to develop technology to stay one step ahead of the person trying to use it negatively.
– Frank Abagnale
I served my time and came out of prison when I was just 26 and have worked with the government for 37 years. But people only remember me for what I did before that.
– Frank Abagnale
I have never witnessed, nor will I live long enough to witness, a more simplistic crime than me stealing your identity.
– Frank Abagnale