Newsday from New York, New York • 72

rr i i tr If A B3 Tales of an Ex-Con Man if 3 A new Spielberg film is based on the early life of a fake on the run Ntwaday Photo Ari Mints By Mary Voboril STAFF WSTTEII ith brio sangfroid and a brash maturi-' ty that belied bis tender years Frank Abagnale Jr took an array of adolescent fantasies and morphed them into reality Luxury cars look-at-me women exotic travel high-end hotels ready cash Abagnale had them all as a teenage runaway bankrolling himself with $25' million in bogus checks before his capture at age 21 In a Pan Am uniform he was an international frequent flyer hitching courtesy rides on rival airlines for free Aided and abetted by premature gray hair he also posed as a doctor lawyer professor stockbroker federal agent and in an especially nimble and impressive escape a Georgia prison inspector Yet be fooled by all this picaresque glitz says Abagnale now 54 he says very lonely Still it had its moments Some of them are recounted in Steven film Me If You starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the high-living Abagnale and Tom Hanks as the nerdy humorless and utterly fictionalized FBI agent who pursues him never thought of it as is current take on his five-year criminal venture was a kid who was alone at Christmas alone on my birthday It was a life of looking over your shoulder A life on the Yet in a Walter Mitty-iah fleece-the-Es-tablishment sense the stray has a timeless appeal some Abagnale says see it as Wow this is exciting it must have been really cool to do me it was survival" He now is a secure-document consultant who lives in Tulsa Okla and has offices in Washington DC Married 26 years he has three sons one in law school and two in college Abagnale was taking part in a DreamWorks Pictures junket promoting the film (that opens nationwide on Wednesday) in which he has a cameo role as a French-policeman a casual occasion but he wears a double-breasted dark suit silk tie 10-year-old black Ferragamo loafers get them and a watch by Audemars Piguet one of his clients helping promote the film for one reason: 25 years ago I signed a contract saying I would Abagnale says the movie had never been made I truly believe that what I did was immoral illegal and unethical not proud of His book of the same name was ghost-written by Houston newsman Stan Redding shortly after Abagnale was paroled in the mid-TOs In somewhat empurpled prose it says the chastened con man was than a buttered and perhaps he was: One of his more novel escapes occurs when he disassembles an aircraft toilet and slithers onto the runway Abagnale received $50000 for the book and $250000 for the rights to the film subtitled The true story of a real which is a con in itself: A small-print Hirlimr says that characters are composites or inventions- and a number of As a youthful con min Frank Abognolo nbovo at tho Manhattan hotel when ho stayod recently would pass bad checks at chain hotels Leonardo DiCaprio left portrays Abagnale In Me If You events Undisputed is the smooth flair Abagnale had for passing bad checks and for sliding Zelig-like in and out of varied careers In Georgia he supervised medical interns allowing actual doctors-to-be to treat patients He studied for the Louisiana bar exam and passed it on his third try He taught sociology at a Utah university though not high school French as the film has it Abagnale whose IQ tests at was savvy enough to know that he pose as any one impostor for too long always knew someone would catch up with me sooner or he says was smart enough to just move and why not since cash was so easy to come by Once he rented a security uniform and in an airport taped a sign to a night depository saying it was out of order and that the receipts should be left with Abagnale More than $62000 was Another time he encoded blank deposit slips with his checking account number He surreptitiously placed them back in their original slots at the bank and unwitting investors funneled more than $42000 into his account Abagnale is one of four children of a once-pros-perous owner of a Manhattan office supply store Tax problems forced its closure and his father became a letter carrier By the time Abagnale was lied after serving 5 years in prison his father flim-flammery into a lucrative career though he never tried to repay the $25 million was not required to" he says To his way of thinking he makes restitution by giving free anti-fraud lectures to the FBI He says he even request travel expenses I had charged the government Abagnale says would be His usual lecture fee however is $15000 An FBI spokesman in Washington DC confirms that Abagnale speaks from time to time at the FBI Academy in Quantico Va but says the reformed con man never received the four FBI commendations the film says he did Abagnale himself volunteers that information smiling and saying in his calm manner just movie Most of Tulsa neighbors he says had no idea of his felonious past though his business clients do: It is after all a selling point His Web site lists such clients as Visa MasterCard Neiman-Marcus American Airlines American Express and Australia Abagnale designs such as passports car titles and birth certificates for state and federal governments design a lot of things that go into keeping them from being he says One somewhat scary denouement to his story he says is that some of the scams he pulled in the '60s would be significantly easier today of the technology The movie portrayed very well how I had to go buy counter checks at a stationery store use an old IBM Selectric change the fonts to make it look like it was printed use decals to make company logos check took hours Today we could sit with a laptop and create the most beautiful check ever seen in 15 minutes and print it out on a color printer and go downstairs and cash Similarly identification theft is simplistic All of us have about 22 pieces of information that are public record more than enough for me to become One tiling like moviegoers to take away from the film is the fact that even for criminals is redemption can do something like this and turn it around and make it into something really Abagnale says have a second chance at changing your I 3 He says he sold his story in the 1970s because he had decided to go straight and simply needed the cash He later parlayed his incisive knowledge of.