The Times from Shreveport, Louisiana • Page 95

EM Rffl IPOS rin XL By GARY WALKER The Times RUSTON He is still wanted in over 20 countries. He stole $2.5 million before his twenty-second birthday, and in a recent performance Frank W. Abagnale Jr. stole the imagination of nearly 700 Louisiana Tech students. Billed as the "World's Greatest Impostor," Abagnale has a certain look about him that almost radiates charm and poise.

With his receding hair streaked with gray and neatly dressed in a white turtleneck sweater and coat with dark pants, you would estimate him to be in his mid- to late 40s. The audience gasps in disbelief when he reveals his true age just 33. "My hair has been slightly gray since I was 16," Abagnale says with a smile. At that age, he began posing as a Pan Am pilot and went on to hold positions as a bogus pediatrician, an assistant attorney, a sociology professor and an FBI agent. He was rated as a master thief by Interpol by the time he was 21 years old.

"I was stealing money faster than I could spend it. One day I returned to my room to find there was no space in either of my suitcases for clothes. They were both full of loose bills." How did he do it? His impersonations began after he ran away from home in upsate New York to New York City because of a marital dispute be him back to the U.S. from which he could not be extradited again because he was a U.S. citizen.

Aboard an SAS Airlines plane heading for New York and the arms of waiting federal agents, Abagnale began to get apprehensive about New York prisons. When the plane landed and began to taxi, he put his years of airline experience to work. By lifting the toilet seat and sewage container in the men's room, Abagnale jumped through a trap service door to the asphalt below the tail of the plane. "I took off running. I thought they were right behind me.

What I didn't know was that the door was spring-loaded and when it slammed shut the whole assembly fell back into place. Nobody heard anything because of the engines' roar." Unable to find Abagnale later in the cabin, a disgruntled FBI agent reportedly said, "Check the cockpit. He's probably flying the damn thing!" The New York Times carried the headline "Skyway Man Disappears at 30,000 Feet." Abagnale was recaptured in Montreal and later was held in the maximum security Atlanta Federal Penitiary which he promptly left by impersonating a federal prison inspector. At age 21, Abagnale was not only the youngest man ever to enter Atlanta's federal penitentiary, he was and is the only man ever to escape. Recaptured again, wanted in all 50 states, the charges against Abagnale were brought together in one federal court.

He served four consecutive years in U.S. prisons for his crimes. Speaking about his time in prison, Abagnale grows somber and looks even older somehow. "Glamour is always in the eye of the beholder. I never thought what I was doing was glamorous.

"I will never know what it is like to be 16. 1 never had a chance to grow up. I still wake up with nightmares about prison. Prison is a place where each night you hear a cell door close and it's like being at your own funeral. It wasn't worth it at all." After his release Abagnale was placed on probation in Houston.

There he worked diligently at a pizza restaurant and a supermarket. Though he was rapidly promoted in each job, he was fired when his record became known. Abagnale then founded an "educational consulting corporation" which specializes in teaching his knowledge of con games and thievery to banks and businesses. Today the firm employs 100 people and its material has been used in 17,000 financial institutions, 35,000 public high schools, 7,000 universities and 3,000 police departments, according to Abagnale. The entertainment industry has gone wild over Abagnale's exploits.

The popular television series It Takes A Thief was based on his story, and a movie based on his best-selling book, Catch Me If You Can, is slated for release this summer. Abagnale has also been a popular speaker at colleges and a frequent guest on The Tonight Show and other talk shows. His story is so unbelievable that you can't help but wonder perhaps Johnny Carson had a point when he asked Abagnale, "How do we know you're not conning us?" Well, we don't have to take Abagnale's word for it. Just ask the FBI Interpol Pan Am Lufthansa TWA Air France Timet photoGARY WALKER Frank Abagnale signs autographs for Tech students I mean, I hate blood. When I went in there I never walked over to the table to see the patient.

I would have thrown up all over him." Using his photographic memory to the fullest, Abagnale studied medicine. He would ask the interns what they planned to do and approved whatever they said. "The interns loved me. The nurses hated me because I was always chasing the Can-dystripers. The nurses were too old for me." After about a year, Abagnale decided to move to Louisiana and become a "lawyer." "I picked Louisiana for two reasons they didn't require a degree then, and because of the Napoleonic Code." Because of the code, any out-of-state-law-yer has to study and pass the Louisiana Bar Association exam; he is then allowed to practice in Louisiana.

Abagnale passed on his third try and went on to work as an aide in the Civil Division of the Louisiana attorney general's office. Later, back in the airline scam, Abagnale was caught in France after touring the world with six women he convinced were Pan Am publicity models. Convicted at last of forgery, but never told what his sentence was, Abagnale was placed in a 17th century prison called the House of Arrest. "We called the cells The Terrible Fives because they were 5 feet, by 5 feet, by 5 feet," Abagnale explains by measuring the air with his hands. "No window, no light, no talking for six months.

The only thing in the cell was a urine bucket which was never emptied. It overflowed onto the floor until it was that (about 2 inches) deep and you had to sleep sitting up. France is not a place to break the law." His weight down from 198 lbs. to 109 suffering double pneumonia, Abagnale was extradited to Sweden and hospitalized. Jail in Sweden was "a lot like the Holiday Inn in Ruston," he says.

The Swedes took pity on Abagnale and sent tween his parents. He says his inspiration to impersonate an airline pilot came when "I saw an Eastern Airline flight crew coming out of the Commodore Hotel." Abagnale then obtained a Pan Am uniform by telling Pan Am's uniform contractor company that he was a West Coast pilot who had lost his uniform. The company was happy to issue him a uniform, the cost of which would be deducted from his Pan Am clothing allowance. He talked IBM into making an identity card for him by posing as a representative of a small foreign airline which wanted to start using Pan Am-style cards. "But the Pan Am logo was missing from the upper right corner," Abagnale says.

"So I went to a hobby shop, bought a model airplane, threw it away and kept the decal. It was a perfect fit." During the next two years, the teen-ager flew an estimated 3 million free miles in the cockpit jumpseat of every airline except Pan Am. "I was afraid if I flew with Pan Am someone would notice my phony I.D." Abagnale found that being an airline pilot had big advantages beside flying at the company's expense. "Back then the airlines had an agreement to cash the checks of other airlines' flight crews up to $100." He would start at one end of the airport ticket counters and work his way down, cashing bad checks all along the way. "In a big airport like Los Angeles that could take up to eight hours.

What happens after eight hours? Shift change! Start all over again." When he discovered the FBI had put out a warrent for his arrest, Abagnale dropped the airline scam and "retired" to Atlanta, Ga. There, when opportunity presented itself, he became probably the only 18-year-old supervising doctor in U.S. history by posing as "Dr. Frank Williams, pediatrician." "I guess what I hated most was 'Dr. Williams, Dr.

Williams to the Emergency 1 was stealing money faster than 0 could spend it' Tin Times Feb. 21, 182.