Top 140 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Abagnale

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American celebrity Frank Abagnale.

Last updated on December 22, 2024.

Frank William Abagnale Jr. is an American author and convicted felon. Abagnale targeted individuals and small businesses but gained notoriety in the late 1970s by claiming a diverse range of victimless workplace frauds, many of which are now in doubt. In 1980, Abagnale co-wrote his autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, which built a narrative around these claimed victimless frauds. The book later inspired the film of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio. He has also written four other books. Abagnale runs Abagnale and Associates, a consultancy firm.

American - Celebrity | Born: April 27, 1948

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Frank Abagnale

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

Frank Abagnale

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.

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 owe a debt to my country 800 times greater than I could ever repay.

Frank Abagnale

You have to think a little smarter, be proactive, not reactive.

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 truth is, your identity already has been stolen.

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

I think my wife understood from the day I met her how important she was to me and how important it was for me becoming a husband and a father.

Frank Abagnale

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

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

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 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.'

Frank Abagnale

The biggest thing that concerns me is when we start getting countries using cybercrime to shut down infrastructure, electricity, communications systems, the Internet, et cetera.

Frank Abagnale

What I did in my youth is hundreds of times easier today. Technology breeds crime.

Frank Abagnale

The front of a cheque alone gives someone enough information to steal your identity.

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

Mostly, cybercriminals are motivated to commit crime for financial gain.

Frank Abagnale

There's no such thing as a foolproof system. That idea fails to take into account the creativity of fools.

Frank Abagnale

Airline pilots are men to be admired and respected. Men to be trusted. Men of means. And you don't expect an airline pilot to be a local resident. Or a check swindler.

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

The police can't protect consumers. People need to be more aware and educated about identity theft. You need to be a little bit wiser, a little bit smarter and there's nothing wrong with being skeptical. We live in a time when if you make it easy for someone to steal from you, someone will.

Frank Abagnale

Why do the Yankees always win? The other team can't stop looking at the pinstripes.

Frank Abagnale

There is no technology today that cannot be defeated by social engineering.

Frank Abagnale

People say that life is short, but it isn't short. It's very long.

Frank Abagnale

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.

Frank Abagnale

Every form of payment has some risk associated with it.

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

The Internet can be used to hurt many people.

Frank Abagnale

I'm a true believer that you have a moral obligation to keep your employees honest, and that is why you have controls, so I'm never tempted or put in a position where I could do something to defraud my employer.

Frank Abagnale

We all grow up. Hopefully, we get wiser. Age brings wisdom, and fatherhood changes one's life completely.

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

Only one thing makes a man a man. He loves his wife, is faithful to her, and puts his wife and kids as the most important things in life.

Frank Abagnale

The law sometimes sleeps; it never dies.

Frank Abagnale

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

Frank Abagnale

When people ask me about being portrayed onscreen by Leonardo DiCaprio, I always say, 'I love it - no matter how old I get, people are going to think that's what I look like.'

Frank Abagnale

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

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

When people write about me, they usually start off with the headline 'World's Greatest Con Man.'

Frank Abagnale

It's quite flattering to have Leonardo DiCaprio play you in the movie. He's a great-looking young man.

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 speak at a lot of universities, and people are always worried about Facebook, and when I explain how to use it properly, they immediately go back and make those changes.

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

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

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it opens the door to many crimes, so you have to stay ahead of it.

Frank Abagnale

I taught at the FBI for four decades - how to think outside of the box and deal with social engineering.

Frank Abagnale

My proudest moment was probably when my oldest boy finished law school and went on to become an FBI agent. It was just beyond my imagination that - with my background - my own son would become an FBI agent.

Frank Abagnale

It's amazing to me that we live in such a wonderful country where anyone can have a problem in life and get up, dust themselves off and start all over again.

Frank Abagnale

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

Frank Abagnale

If you took a child in London and took their iPhone and took them somewhere else in the country, they'd probably not be able to find their way back. That's a shame.

Frank Abagnale

If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been 'Catch Me In Two Days'.

Frank Abagnale

I was a millionaire twice over and half again before I was twenty-one. I stole every nickel of it and blew the bulk of the bundle on fine threads, gourmet foods, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes, fine wheels, and other sensual goodies.

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

I would have thought technology would have made it harder to do what I did.

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

Nothing has brought me more love, joy and peace than being a good husband and good daddy.

Frank Abagnale

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.

Frank Abagnale

In the old days, a con man would be good looking, suave, well dressed, well spoken and presented themselves real well. Those days are gone because it's not necessary. The people committing these crimes are doing them from hundreds of miles away.

Frank Abagnale

When 'Catch Me If You Can' was published back in 1980, I never dreamed that it would become a bestseller, much less a major motion picture and now a big Broadway musical. What's amazing about the book is that it has never gone out of print.

Frank Abagnale

Top 140 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Abagnale

Related Authors