As part of Google's Security and Privacy Month 2017, we heard from the real Frank Abagnale, Renowned Cybersecurity And Fraud Prevention Expert, Bestselling Author & Subject of Catch Me If You Can.

Disclaimer: Google does not endorse or condone the content contained within this video, nor does it lay claim to the validity of the actions described herein. The following is presented unaltered as it was recorded on Nov 27, 2017, and remains on the Talks at Google YouTube channel for historical purposes.

His transformation from one of the world’s most notorious con men to an international cybersecurity expert trusted by the FBI has been mythologized in film and literature – but the takeaways he shares are the real deal.

Frank's contributions to the world of security are immeasurable. He has become a hero to hundreds of public and private sector organizations for his indispensable counsel and strategic insight on safeguarding information systems and combating cyber-fraud.

With an eye on the latest techniques developed by high-tech criminals to deceive and defraud, Frank leaves audiences with a deep understanding of today’s evolving security landscape, and more importantly, a vision of how to make the world a safer place.

I'm going to ask your indulgence on 2 things.

It's allergy season, so I have a real hard time during this time of the year speaking.

And 2, most of the speaking I do when I walk up to the podium is very technical.

It deals with cybercrime, identity theft, forgery, embezzlement, and things of that nature.

I don't often talk about my life, but Google has asked me today to do something that different and talk a little bit about my life.

And then at the end, of course, I'll take questions.

And those questions can be about any subject matter that you like to ask.

As you know, I've had a lot of people tell my story.

I had a great movie director write a film about my life.

I had a great Broadway musical team make a Tony Award winning Broadway musical about my life.

Had a popular television show on TV, White Collar, for 4 years, created it around my life.

Most of those very creative people have actually never met me personally.

But they've enjoyed telling my story from their point of view.

So I thought I would take a few minutes this morning and actually tell you the story from my point of view.

I was raised just north of New York City in Westchester County, New York.

I was actually 1 of 4 children in the family, the so-called middle child of the 4.

I was educated there by the Christian Brothers of Ireland in a private Catholic school called Iona, where I went to school from kindergarten to high school.

By the time I had reached the age of 16 in the 10th grade, my parents, after 22 years of marriage, 1 day decided to get a divorce.

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

I remember being in the 10th grade when the father walked in the classroom 1 afternoon and asked the brother to excuse me from class.

When I came out in the hallway, the father handed me my books and told me that 1 of the brothers would drive me to the county seat in White Plains, New York, where I would meet my parents and they would explain what was going on.

I remember the brother dropped me at the steps of a big stone building and told me to go on up the steps and my parents would be waiting for me in the lobby.

I remember climbing the steps, seeing a sign on the building that said, Family Court, but I really didn't understand what that meant.

When I arrived in the lobby, my parents were not there, but I was ushered into the back of an immense courtroom where my parents were standing before a judge.

I couldn't hear what the judge was saying nor my parents' response.

But eventually, the judge saw me at the back of the room and motioned me to approach the bench.

I walked up to stand in between my parents.

I remember distinctly that the judge never looked at me.

He never acknowledged I was standing there.

He simply read from his papers and said that my parents were getting a divorce.

And because I was 16 years of age, I would need to tell the court which parent I chose to live with.

I started to cry, so I turned and ran out of the courtroom.

Judge called for a 10-minute recess, but by the time my parents got outside, I was gone.

My mother never saw me again for about 7 years until I was a young adult.

Contrary to the movie, my father never saw me or ever spoke to me again.

In the mid-1960s, running away was a very popular thing for young people.

A lot of them got caught up in Haight-Ashbury, the hippie scene, the drug scene.

Instead, I took a few belongings from my home, packed them in a bag, boarded what was then the New Haven and Hartford Railroad for the short train ride down to Grand Central Terminal in New York.

My father did own a stationery store in Manhattan.

It was located on the corner of 40th and Madison.

Like all of us, we had to work in that store.

So from the time I was about 13, I made deliveries for my dad in the summer on a bike.

I knew the city very well, so naturally, I started looking for the same type of work.

There were a lot of signs on the windows, stock boy, delivery boy, part-time.

And I went to work for a small amount of money, a few hours a day.

But I soon realized I couldn't support myself on that amount of money.

I also realized as long as people believed I was 16 years old, They weren't going to pay me any more money.

My friends in school used to say that once a week when we dressed in a suit for mass, I looked more like a teacher.

In New York, we had a driver's license at 16.

Back then, it didn't have a photo on it, just an IBM card.

So I altered 1 digit of my date of birth.

I was actually born in April of 1948, but I dropped the 4, converted it to a 3, and that made me 26 years old.

I walked around applying for the same type of work.

People gave me a little more money, a few more hours.

But even then, it was very difficult to make ends meet.

1 of the few things I had taken when I left home was a checkbook.

I had some money in that checking account.

So every so often, I would write a check to supplement my income, $20, $25.

But it was my friends, my peers, who would constantly say to me, you know, You're the only guy who walks into a bank in the middle of Manhattan.

You talk to somebody behind a desk, and they OK your check.

Yeah, but if I walked in there, they wouldn't touch my check.

Now, years later, reporters would write and speculate and say that that was my upbringing.

Mannerisms, dress, appearance, speech, whatever it was, it was very easy to do.

So consequently, when the money ran out, I kept writing those checks.

Police started looking for me as a runaway.

So I thought maybe it was a good time to start thinking about leaving New York City.

But I was quite apprehensive about going to Chicago or Miami, wondered if they'd cash a New York check on a New York driver's license in Miami as quickly as they did in Manhattan.

I was walking up 42nd Street 1 afternoon, about 5 o'clock in the evening, 16 years old, pondering all of these things when I started to approach the front door of an old hotel that used to be there called the Commodore hotel, now the Grand Hyatt.

Just as I was about to get to the front door of the hotel, out stepped an Eastern Airline flight crew onto the sidewalk.

I couldn't help but notice the captain, the co-pilot, the flight engineer, about 3 or 4 flight attendants dragging their bags to the curb to load them in the van to take them to the airport.

As they loaded the van, I thought to myself, that's it.

I could travel all over the world for free.

I probably could get just about anybody anywhere to cash a check for me.

So I walked up the street a little further to 42nd and Park.

So I looked up, and there was New York Airways landing on the roof of the Pan Am building.

Pan Am, the nation's flag carrier, the airline that flew around the world.

I thought, what a perfect airline to use.

So the next day, I placed a phone call to the executive corporate offices of Pan Am.

I remember distinctly when the phone was ringing, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say.

When they answered, Pan American Airlines, good morning.

I'd like to speak to somebody in the purchasing department.

And the clerk came on and said, yes, ma'am, you can help me.

I'm a co-pilot with a company based out of San Francisco.

Been with the company about 7 years, but never had anything like this come up before.

Yesterday, I sent my uniform out through the hotel to have it dry cleaned.

Now the hotel and the cleaner say they can't find it.

Yeah, I'm with the flight in about 4 hours, new uniform.

Certainly, back home in San Francisco, but I'd never get it here in time for my flight.

Do you understand this will cost you the price of uniform, not the company?

He came back and said, my supervisor says you need to go down to the well-built uniform company on Fifth Avenue.

I'll call them and let them know you're on the way.

Well, that's exactly what I wanted to know.

So I went down to the well-built uniform company.

Rosen, fit me out in the uniform, black Aberdeen, 3 gold stripes on the arm.

I certainly looked old enough to be the pilot.

When he was all done, I said, how much do I owe you?

Then in these boxes, put your employee number.

Then we bill this back under uniform allowance.

Comes out of your next pay and end paycheck.

New York had 2 airports, LaGuardia and Kennedy.

Naturally, LaGuardia being the closer of the 2, that's where I went.

I spent most of the morning walking around LaGuardia in the uniform, trying to figure out now that I had this uniform, how the hell did he get on these planes?

I got a little hungry, so about lunchtime, I walked in the luncheonette in the terminal, sat down at the counter on the stool, and ordered a sandwich.

The flight attendant sat in the booth, but the pilot sat at the counter on either side of me and captain right next to me.

Now, back before deregulation of the airlines, airline people thought of themselves as just 1 big family.

So they didn't hesitate a moment to talk to each other.

Tell me, what's Pan Am doing out here in LaGuardia?

I had a layover, so I came over to visit some friends.

Matter of fact, I'm on my way back to Kennedy now.

So tell me, young man, what type of equipment are you on?

Now, airline people have a lot of jargon for things.

1 of them is they never call a plane a plane or an aircraft.

And what type of equipment you're on, I mean, what type of plane do you fly?

Of course, I didn't know that, and I thought, type of equipment?

They must mean what type of equipment is on the planes I fly.

So I thought, well, they've got the wings.

They always had a sticker on the engine, who manufactured the engine.

All 3 pilots kind of just stopped eating and leaned over.

Everybody had an airline ID card, a plastic laminated card, much like a driver's license today.

Yet without the ID card, the uniform was worthless.

I went back to Manhattan pretty discouraged, thinking where would I come up with a Pan American Airline corporate ID.

I noticed a big, thick Manhattan Yellow Pages, so I pulled them down on the bed, flipped them open, and looked under the word identification.

There were 3 or 4 pages of companies who made convention badges, metal badges, plastic badges, police badges, fire badges.

And finally, 1 company said, listen, most of those airline IDs manufactured by Polaroid, 3M company, you need to call 1 of them.

Finally got the 3M company on the phone in Manhattan.

We manufacture Pan Am's identification system, along with a number of other carriers.

So I tell you, I'm a purchasing officer for a major US carrier.

We're getting ready to expand our routes, hire a lot of new employees, go to a formal ID.

We're very impressed with this Pan Am format.

I wondered if I came by your office this afternoon briefly, we could discuss quantity and price.

So I went by dressed in a suit, and the sales group opened the book.

Yeah, we do United, Braniff, National, Pan Am.

Wonder if you have a sample I could bring back.

And he brought me back a 5 by 7 glossy piece of paper with a picture of an ID card blown up in the middle of it.

Someone else's picture in the picture, John Doe for a name.

And emboldened across the front, this is a sample only.

I said, no, I'm afraid this one's a unit.

I need to bring back an actual physical card.

And by the way, what is all this equipment on the floor?

Well, tell you what, since we have to buy it all, why don't we just demonstrate how it works and use me?

I was going down the elevator studying the card.

It had a blue border across the top, about a half inch in Pan Am's color blue, but not a single thing on the card said Pan Am.

This was a plastic card, like a credit card, so you couldn't type on it, couldn't write on it, couldn't print on it.

Discouraged, I put it in my pocket, headed back to the hotel.

As I was walking back, I noticed that I had passed a hobby shop.

Excuse me, sir, I see you sell a lot of models here.

And I bought a model of a Pan Am 707 cargo jet, took it back to my room, opened the box, threw all the parts out.

But there at the bottom of the box was a sheet of decals that went on the model.

And when soaked in a glass of water, the little Pan Am blue globe that would have went on the tail of the plastic plane went perfect up at the top of the plastic card.

And the word Pan Am in their special styling of graphics that would have went on the fuselage went perfect across the top of the card.

And the clear decal on the laminated plastic made a beautiful identification card.

Pan Am says they estimate that between the ages of 16 and 18, I flew more than a million miles for free, boarded more than 260 commercial aircraft in more than 26 countries around the world.

Pan Am says, keep in mind the fact that Frank Abagnale did, in fact, pose as 1 of our pilots for a long period of time.

He never once stepped on board 1 of our aircraft.

I never flew on Pan Am because I was afraid someone might say to me, I'm based in San Francisco, been out there 16 years.

Or someone might say, you know, your ID card is not exactly like my ID card.

If I wanted to go somewhere, I literally just walked out to the airport, walked up on the board, United flight 800 to Chicago.

Then I went downstairs to the door marked United Operations and walked in.

The operations clerk, hey, Pan Am, what can we do for you?

I was wondering if the jump seats open on 800 needed it at Chicago.

I'd give them my ID, write me out a pass.

I'd walk out, hand it to the flight attendant.

She'd open the door to the cockpit, and I'd step in.

They had a captain, a co-pilot, a flight engineer, in a seat behind the captain called the jumpsuit, where pilots deadhead on company time.

Now, because pilots love to talk shop, once you picked up that jargon, it was the same conversation over and over and over.

So I'd just step on board, even down to Bob Davis being around in Chicago.

On the taxi out, always the same questions.

So Bob, how long have you been with Pan Am?

Right seat, which is airline terminology for a co-pilot.

Matter of fact, whatever they flew, I didn't fly.

I'd go by the Pan Am ticket counter, but just enough to get the attention of the passenger service rep.

Excuse me, I haven't laid over here in over a year.

I was still at the Parma House Hilton downtown, catch a crew bus, low level door, 3 up.

I'd go down the Parma House Hilton, walk in, and on the corner of the registration desk was a little sign that said Airline Cruise.

You signed in, referenced your flight number, showed your ID.

It would be direct billed for my room and my meals.

I also could cash a personal check at the front desk because I was an employee of the airline.

The airline had a contract with the hotel.

And as a courtesy, they'd cash your check.

But then I found out that every airline honors every other airline employs personal check, actually a reciprocal agreement still practiced today in 2017.

So at the San Francisco Airport a Delta flight attending can walk up to an American airline ticket counter, show her ID, and cash a personal check up to $100 and vice versa.

Of course, when I found that out, I'd go out to JFK or LAX, only I'd go to everybody, Northeast, National, KLM, AirFram.

It would take me a good 8 hours stopping at every counter and every building.

By the time I got all the way around the other end of the airport, at least 8 hours had gone by.

As you know, I went on to impersonate a doctor in a Georgia hospital for a while.

I took the bar exams in Louisiana, passed the bar, went to work for Attorney General P.F.

Grimiot on the Civil Division of the state court, where I spent about a year practicing law.

In both the job as a lawyer and the doctor, no 1 ever doubted for a second I was not eligible or qualified to do so.

Of course, like any criminal, sooner or later you get caught.

I was actually arrested just once in my life when I was 21 years old by the French police in a small town in southern France called Montpellier.

The French police were actually arresting me on an Interpol warrant issued by the Swedish police, who were looking for me for forgery in Sweden, but believed that I was living in France.

When the French authorities took me into custody on that warrant, they realized I had forged checks all over France, so they refused to honor the warrant and Sweden's request for my extradition.

They later convicted me of forgery and sent me to French prison.

I served my time in a place called the Maison d'Array, the house of arrest in a small town in southern France called Pepinon.

Steven Spielberg told Barbara Walters, it was extremely important to me to go back to that cell, to the exact cell he was in, and reconstruct it, according to the logbooks during his stay there.

He said, to my amazement, that was a blanket on the floor, no mattress, a hole in the floor to go to the bathroom, no plumbing, no electricity.

He said, according to the logbooks, I entered the prison at 198 pounds, left the prison at 109 pounds.

When my sentence was over in France, I was extradited to Sweden, where I was later convicted of forgery in a Swedish court of law, and sent to a Swedish penitentiary in Malmö, Sweden.

When my prison term was up in Sweden, US federal authorities took custody of me and returned me to the United States.

Eventually, a United States federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, would sentence me to 12 years in federal prison.

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Frank Abagnale | Catch Me If You Can | Talks at Google