Written by Frank W. Abagnale
With Stan Redding
 born April 27, 1948
 Grew up in New York City
 Now lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma
 Owns a fraud prevention firm
 Has written The Art of the Steal, Real U Guide To Identity
Theft, Stealing Your Life.
Protagonist
 Frank Abagnale
 “you’re rooting for a man who would no sooner look at you
than see your face as a giant lollipop with the word
‘sucker’ printed on it. And why not? After all, these days, a
criminal this good is hard to find.”Entertainment weekly
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-QSz4R7mR0
Antagonist
 O’reilly is the FBI agent that is constantly trying to catch
frank.
Favorite Character
 Frank W Abagnale Jr
 He pretended to be eight different people
 Wrote cashed over $2.5 million in bad checks
 Visited over twenty five countries
 All before he was twenty one.
Least favorite character
 Paulette Abagnale
 Forced frank to go to catholic boarding school
 Divorced Frank abagnal sr because they were becoming
poor.
exposition
 He was the 3rd of four children. His parents names were
Frank, and Paulette
 He lived in Bronxville, New York with both parents until he
was twelve.
 Once his parents divorced he was the only kid who lived
with his father.
 Was sent to catholic boarding school after not paying the
bill on his credit card
 Lived with his dad until he was sixteen
Rising action
 He runs away from home at age sixteen
 Impersonates a co-pilot for Pan American airways
 Writes and cashes over $2.5 million in bad checks
 Visited over 26 countries
 Pretended to be eight different people
 Did all this before he was 21
climax
 He is finally caught by French Police and spends eight
months in Perpignan Prison.
 Then he was sent to Malmo Sweden where he spent six
months.
 Then he was expedited by a Swedish judge to the U.S.
 Once in the U.S. he escaped twice and was finally caught
in Montreal and sentenced to twelve years in federal
prison in Virginia.
Falling action
 Served Four years of the 72 he was sentenced to.
 He was then granted parole
 He then worked as a waiter, a pizza chef, grocery stocker,
and a movie projectionist.
resolution
 After being fired from every job he could get he got an
idea.
 He knew that he knew more about check forgery than
probably anyone else.
 He decided to put those skills to good use.
 He now is a consultant to the FBI, and owns a secure
documents and fraud prevention firm called Abagnale and
associates.
Setting
 Time- Period 1960’s
 Place- Begins in New York city and then travels to nearly
anywhere you could think of.
 Nobody had really committed check fraud or identity theft
on the scale he did until then.
Themes
 Family Problems, Broken Home, Divorce
 Greed, always wanting something better
 The thrill or challenge of doing something illegal or wrong.
Rating of the book
 On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it an 8
 Very entertaining
 Well written
 Not really a very clear message, just a lot of cool stories.
Main social issue
 Fraud-deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of
confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or
dishonest advantage. (dictionary.com)
 There are many types of fraud including: Identity theft,
telemarketing fraud, and pyramid schemes.
Identity theft
 “ I have actually never witnessed a crime in my entire
career on both sides of the law that is so simplistic and so
easy to do.” Frank W. Abagnal Jr
 The crime of the century is
identity theft. We have given
away so much information that
anyone anywhere can become
anybody at anytime. (Abagnale)
Identity theft
 “In my thirty-one years teaching at the FBI academy I have
only seen crime get faster, easier, harder to detect, and
committed from thousand of miles away where we don’t
even have jurisdiction to go arrest the people who commit
those crimes.” Frank W Abagnale Jr
 The federal trade commission estimates that 9 million
people per year are affected by identity theft just in the
United states.
 The federal trade commission estimates that 9 million
people per year are affected by identity theft just in the
United states.
 Identity theft is one of if not the most prevalent of all the
types of fraud.
 In the same survey the found the estimated total dollars
stolen and it was more than $53
 While there are many legitimate companies that use the
telephone for marketing, consumers and business lose
millions of dollars to telemarketing fraud each year. It's
sometimes hard to tell the difference between reputable
telemarketers and criminals who use the phone to rob
people.(www.fraud.org)
Telemarketing fraud
 Just like in frank abagnales time check fraud is a big
problem.
 It is the number one complaint for the last two years
according to the national fraud information center.
 The average victim lost over $3800.oo
 Consumers paid with phony checks for work or items sold,
 instructed to wire money back.
Telemarketing fraud
 The most expensive average loss reported to the national
fraud information center is $8,417.61
 This is the average amount stolen when a lottery club
Requests for payment to claim lottery winnings or get help
to win, often foreign lotteries (www.fraud.org)
 In June, hackers infiltrated the computers at Card Systems
and stole as many as 40 million credit card numbers, the
largest reported breach of personal data. ---Los Angeles
Times, 2005
 There are many ways to steal your information and almost
no ways get it back once your identity has been stolen
skimming
 It is the illegal copying of information from the magnetic
strip of a credit or ATM card. The scammers try to steal
your details so they can access your accounts. Once
scammers have skimmed your card, they can create a fake
or ‘cloned' card with your details on it. The scammer is
then able to run up charges on your account. (ksl.com)
Skimming in Utah
 "Somebody might sit in a parking lot with a laptop for a
while, or a BlackBerry, something that would collect via
Bluetooth -- would download occasionally as people would
come though and buy gasoline, collect their information."
 Police say between the device at the 7-Eleven on 1300 East
and the device found at the 7-Eleven on 9400 South,
consumers lost more than $11,000 from criminals
skimming their credit and debit cards. (Yi,Sandra KSL.com
2010)
Good ways to avoid getting
skimmed
 shop assistant takes your card out of your sight in order to
process your transaction.
 You are asked to swipe your card through more than one
machine.
 You see a shop assistant swipe the card through a different
machine to the one you used.
 You notice something suspicious about the card slot on an ATM
(e.g. an attached device).
 You notice unusual or unauthorized transactions on your
account or credit card statement.
-Courtesy Australian Competition and Consumer Protection
prevention
 “Silence is frauds best friend. Word of mouth is frauds
worst enemy.” Fraudaid.com
 An interesting point about fraud is that it is a crime in
which you decide on whether to participate. Hanging up
the phone or not responding to shady mailings or emails
makes it difficult for the scammer to commit fraud.
(http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm)
Avoiding fraud
 As with most things if it looks to good to be true it most
likely is. This is one of the key points the FBI makes in
avoiding fraud.
 According to the FBI we give out so much information
about ourselves that it is almost impossible to prevent
identity theft.
 Some tips the FBI gives to avoiding fraud:
 Never give your credit card number over the telephone
unless you make the call.
 Report unauthorized financial transactions to your bank,
credit card company, and the police as soon as you detect
them.
 Don't pay for a "free prize." If a caller tells you the
payment is for taxes, he or she is violating federal law.
Always report fraud
 If nobody reports that they were scammed the proper
authorities will never know it happened and never look for
that person.
 It is next to impossible to track someone who committed
cyber fraud, so always report it.
 Learn about current schemes that at are out there then
you will be better prepared to recognize and avoid them.