Top 140 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Abagnale - Page 2

If I wanted to lay down a baby con, I could say I was the product of a broken home. But I'd only be bum-rapping my parents.

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.

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

I think I was so successful, not because I was brilliant, but because I was so young. I had no fear of consequences.

I partied in every capital in Europe, basked on all the famous beaches, and good-timed it in South America, the South Seas, the Orient, and the more palatable portions of Africa.

While I was on an undercover assignment in Texas, I met my wife, Kelly.

I didn't sit outside the bank and plan. I just went in and ad libbed because I was so young. But I was smart enough to know I would absolutely get caught.

In all the years I've taught at the FBI Academy, I've only seen crime get easier, faster, and harder to detect.

You have to believe in what you do. Take something you truly believe in and go about it in an honest way.

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.

Most people don't recognize me, but they know my name. TSA people rarely recognize my name, ironically, and they are the security people.

We buy into the computer, and everything that comes from the computer, we believe to be the truth.

I kept a notebook, a surreptitious journal in which I jotted down phrases, technical data, miscellaneous information, names, dates, places, telephone numbers, thoughts, and a collection of other data I thought was necessary or might prove helpful.

By the time I had reached the age of 16, in the 10th grade, my parents, after 22 years of marriage, one day decided to get a divorce.

You should know, whether you live in the U.S. or in the U.K., that your identity has already been stolen.

One thing I've found is that if you educate and show people the risk, they will do something about it.

I learned early that class is universally admired.

I went to the library and learned how checks work. I found out that routing numbers are like zip codes: the checks are sent to the bank that correlates to the routing number. If I manipulate those numbers to a bank far away, it would take longer to get back to the bank, which gave me more time to write more bad checks.

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

Most people don't reconcile their bank accounts.

It's amazing how much information we share in social media, then we wonder why people steal our identity.

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

I contend that there really are no more con men. There's no need for con men anymore. There's no need for the very sophisticated, suave guy, the well-dressed guy. Today, you steal with the computer from thousands of miles away - from China, from Libya, from Hong Kong. Your victim's never going to see you, so there's no need to be any of that.

As the lawyer, I found most of it was a matter of research, which I was great at - that's what I did to death - and then basically persuading people that you're right, and they're wrong... I found that the easiest of all the professions to impersonate.

You have to be very limited in who you give your social security number to.

If you tell me your name and date of birth, that's all I need to steal your identity.

You get to a point in your life where you go, 'I don't remember what I did.'

It's really frustrating when you're an identity-theft victim, and you go to the police and you say, 'This guy in Florida, he stole my name and got a credit card - this is his address,' and they say, 'We don't have jurisdiction in Florida. You need to go to the FBI.'

We really need to get control over Social Security numbers. My children's generation, they're past it. But their children should be able to have a number that is secure.

When I was 28 years old, I thought it would be great to have a movie about my life. I was egotistical and self-centered.

I wasn't a Pan Am pilot or any other kind of pilot.

I'm so different from the egotistical, self-centred person I was when I did those things. And to watch someone acting out your memories on the screen is like reliving it. Like someone taking you back and showing you what you did.

Almost any fault, sin or crime is considered more leniently if there's a touch of class involved.

I didn't like taking money from individuals.

People care about others in their immediate network.

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 don't believe that a piece of paper will excuse my actions. In the end, only my actions will.

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

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.

I don't do online banking.

Unlike most divorces, where the children were usually the first to know, my parents were very good about keeping that a secret.

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.'

I make my home in Tulsa.

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.

When I look back at my life now, I'm not amazed by what I did at 16 to 21.

I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.

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 look at any successful professional - a salesperson, a marketer, a real estate agent, a trader - they all have the same qualities as the con man. The only difference is that one side uses their talents in the right direction and the con man is taking the easy way out.

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

We should be very concerned: if identity theft is so simple to do, what's to stop me from entering this country and assuming the identity of someone else for the sole purpose of living here illegally for terrorist reasons? That alone would be a concern.

It is amazing the information we give away. We make it easier and easier for criminals.

I was always accepted at par value. I wore the uniform of a Pan Am pilot; therefore, I must be a Pan Am pilot.

Had I been older - maybe 25 or 30 - I would have never tried half the things I did because I would have rationalized everything and never did it.

We're coming down to an extremely unethical society. Very few colleges offer courses in ethics, and very few companies have a code of conduct or code of ethics.

I'm glad I'm a draw. People know that, not only am I the guy that did it, I spent 40 years on the other side.

I never use debit cards. I only use credit cards. This way, if someone does get my account number... and charges $1 million, by federal law, my liability is zero.

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.

Too many of us are vulnerable, and I look forward to working with AARP to advise people about the safest ways to conduct their financial transactions and manage social media.

Christopher Walken and Nathalie Baye played my parents so well that I really thought I was in my living room at Christmas. My mother couldn't have been played more correctly.

You fight technology with technology, so you have to stay one step ahead of the criminal. It's very much a chess game - they make a move, you have to make a move.