Frank Abagnale Quotes

“A former police chief of Houston once said of me: Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it 'U.R. Hooked' and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver's license for identification.”

“A lot of people say I was brilliant. I wasn't. I was an opportunist: a young entrepreneur who saw things and took advantage.”

“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.”

“At the FBI, very rarely do they investigate crime under $100,000.”

“Criminals know that if they stay under certain thresholds, nobody is going to come after them.”

“Criminals look at identity theft and say only 1 in 700 criminals gets convicted of it. And they look at check forgery and they know that for every 1,400 forgers arrested, only about 123 get convicted and about 26 go to jail. So the rewards are great, but the risks are very slim. So that's one of the reasons that make it very popular.”

“Every breach you look at occurred because somebody inside did something they weren't supposed to do. Sometimes there's an accomplice, but most of the time, it's innocent.”

“Every case involving cybercrime that I've been involved in, I've never found a master criminal sitting somewhere in Russia or Hong Kong or Beijing. It always ends up that somebody at the company did something they weren't supposed to do. They read an email, went to a website they weren't supposed to.”

“Every form of payment has some risk associated with it.”

“Everything I have today was because of the love of a woman.”

“I always knew I'd get caught sooner or later. And I knew I would end up going to prison.”

“I didn't like taking money from individuals.”

“I don't do online banking.”

“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.”

“I have never witnessed, nor will I live long enough to witness, a more simplistic crime than me stealing your identity.”

“I have to be honest with you: When the FBI let me out of prison early to advise the agency on preventing fraud, I wasn't a changed person. I wasn't rehabilitated. But when I started working with the FBI, one of the most ethical groups of men and women in the world, I couldn't help but have some of that character rub off on me.”

“I know that people are fascinated by what I did as a teenager, but what I did was immoral, illegal, unethical, and something that I am not proud of – nor will I ever be proud of.”

“I learned early that class is universally admired.”

“I made a lot of exits through side doors, down fire escapes or over rooftops. I abandoned more wardrobes in the course of five years than most men acquire in a lifetime. I was slipperier than a buttered escargot.”

“I spent five years of my youth in prison – some very bad prisons.”

“I teach ethics at the FBI academy, which is ironic.”

“I use a credit card for everything – and I choose one of the ones which gives you money back.”

“I use a shredder for bank statements and phone bills. Most people use ribbon shredders that cut things straight: we can put those back together in an hour. Look for a security microcut shredder, which cuts papers into confetti.”

“I was always in the right place at the right time, always willing to take advantage of an opportunity.”

“I was very blessed it was Steven Spielberg who made the movie. He was very much into the redemption side of the story. They asked him in an interview why he had owned the rights to this story for 20 years before he made the movie, and he said: I wanted to see what the real Frank Abagnale did with his life before I immortalised him on film.”

“If I check into a hotel, a lot of times, they know who I am.”

“If I had been brilliant or a genius, I wouldn't have needed to break the law just to survive.”

“If I had the uniform on, you didn't doubt for a moment I was a pilot. No one ever blinked an eye if I tried to cash a cheque wearing that uniform.”

“If I had walked into a dry cleaning store, and I had looked over, and the register drawer was open with money inside, I wouldn't have taken it.”

“If you believe you have a foolproof system, you've failed to take into consideration the creativity of fools.”