The Real Truth Behind Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can is a beloved classic with a centralized theme throughout, lying. So you might not be shocked to learn the biopic about a guy who lies all the time might have lied about some of the lies. And that's why today we're calling out every lie in Catch Me If You Can. If you grew up in the early 2000s, you probably remember the absolute chokehold that Catch Me If You Can had on cable television. It was one of those movies that seemed to be playing on TNT every 14 minutes. And honestly, fair. It's stylish, charming, beautifully directed, and packed with mid-2000s swagger. The movie, which first hit theaters in 2002, was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as charming con man Frank Abagnale Jr., with Tom Hanks as the morally upright FBI agent hunting him down. The screenplay came from Jeff Nathanson, and it was based on Abagnale's best-selling 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, credited to Frank and co-writer Stan Redding. But for as much as people loved the film, there's one little problem. Nearly every major thing about it is a lie, and not just a Hollywood exaggeration lie. We're talking a Frank Abagnale pretty much made the whole thing up and everyone believed him and then kept repeating it for decades lie. The studio pitched the movie to the public as a stranger-than-fiction tale about a teenage mastermind who ricocheted through law, medicine, engineering, and aviation all before turning 21. It was a story that could make even a rocket scientist feel unaccomplished. But don't worry, you still have time to do all that stuff too, as long as you're willing to lie about it. In the film, Frank impersonates a Pan Am pilot, fakes being a doctor in Georgia, passes the Louisiana bar exam, escapes federal custody by slipping through the toilet of a commercial jet, and eventually becomes a trusted FBI consultant, all before turning 21. There were no red flags here, people. I guess Spielberg, DiCaprio, and Hanks gave it the exact sheen of prestige that makes everything feel legitimate. And the movie delivered. It made over $350 million worldwide and earned two Academy Awards nominations. It also gave DiCaprio one of his most beloved performances, while simultaneously ensuring that everyone's bad Christopher Walken impressions Two little mice. Actually, that's probably still in second place too. I could've used a little more cowbell. Anyway, it's now considered one of Spielberg's most purely enjoyable films. And that's really saying something when you're talking about the guy who directed Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Jurassic Park. But it's true. Catch Me If You Can is a breezy, bright, jazzy piece of con man folklore, and it deserves all the praise. But none of that changes the fact that almost all of it, the book, the movie, the speeches, the mythology, is basically pure fiction. Frank Abagnale is one of the most successful con artists in the world, but not because he forged checks or convinced everyone he was an airline pilot. No, Frank Abagnale's greatest con is convincing everyone that his life was a series of cons. It's called lying, and it's more common than you may think. The most famous part of Frank Abagnale's story is definitely his pilot impersonation, the Pan Am uniform, the free flights, the charm, and of course, all that money he stole. But was it real? Well, sort of. Yes, Abagnale did briefly impersonate a Pan Am employee, but the financial scale of his con was wildly inflated by Abagnale's book and the movie. Abagnale claimed he cashed millions of dollars in fake checks from Pan Am, but historical researchers found the actual number was, wait for it, just $1,500. Not millions, not hundreds of thousands, not even thousands, just a measly thousand and a half. That's a big, big difference between being an international master criminal who stole millions of dollars from a global corporation and some guy who rented a costume and used it to get away with rent money once. And since the stolen millions was the truly impressive part of the whole thing, we're calling that a lie. So we've established that Frank didn't steal millions by dressing as a pilot, but the aviation-related falsehoods don't stop there. One of the film's most cinematic moments is Frank slipping out of an airplane bathroom on the tarmac and sprinting away while the FBI panics. It's an incredible scene. Also, it never happened. There is no documentation, not from the FBI, not from state police, not from any airport, that Abagnale ever escaped custody in this manner. It was completely invented for the sake of a good story, and should you have any inclination to doubt that, allow us to point out that it's physically impossible. Yes, according to aviation experts, plane bathrooms are sealed off from the rest of the plane. There's literally no way out other than the door. Even if you managed to pry the toilet up, you'd have to crawl through a pipe four inches in diameter to get out. So unless Frank has the powers of Ant-Man, this one is just another lie. For the record, Abagnale did once escape from an airplane, but he did it through the kitchen gallery, where the food is loaded on the plane, which is way easier and way less movie-worthy. Even though some of Frank's claims about his time at Pan Am were BS, that part of the story is at least partially true, unlike another entire chunk of the movie. One of the most memorable parts of Catch Me If You Can is DiCaprio proudly strolling into the Atlanta hospital as Dr. Frank Connors, charming the nurses, and pretending to supervise operations. It's a perfect sequence, and perfectly untrue. Journalists, researchers, and later independent investigators found no record whatsoever that Frank Abagnale ever worked as a doctor, medical supervisor, or medical intern in any hospital in Georgia or anywhere else. As movie fans, we find that a little disappointing, but as human beings who might wind up in a hospital at any moment, it's a bit of a relief. Even easier to disprove, Abagnale claimed he worked for nearly a year as the supervising pediatrician at Cobb General Hospital in Georgia, overseeing seven residents and 42 nurses. Now, we're not expert con artists, but we're gonna go ahead and say that in this case, old Frank offered up a few too many specifics for eager fact-checkers. Hospitals keep extremely good employment records because, well, because they're hospitals, and Frank's name simply doesn't appear anywhere. If that doesn't convince you, consider that the hospital also had and no position for a regular overnight pediatrician during that era. Would have been a much easier lie to get away with if he didn't name names and forget to bring receipts. It's a strange rookie mistake for a master con man like Frank, who should have known you should never pick fights with hospital administrators. There's just no winning there. Anyhow, Catch Me If You Can also boasts that Frank passed the Louisiana bar exam at age 19 after studying for two weeks. It's a great legend. It's not real. Louisiana officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence Abagnale ever passed the bar, sat for the bar, or impersonated a lawyer. And unlike the movie suggests, he never served as an attorney for the state. If he wants to claim he was, he'd probably need a good lawyer and not made up one. Speaking of things that are completely made up, in the movie, Tom Hanks plays Carl Hanratty, the lovable but persistent FBI agent tracking Frank for years. In real life, there was an agent loosely connected with Abagnale's case, but Hanratty is basically a composite character, a fictionalized bundle of FBI guy energy. But that's small potatoes compared to Frank's real FBI lie. Y'all ready for this? There's no evidence at all that Frank ever worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not in any capacity. Not as a consultant, not as a trainer, not as a contractor. So where did that idea come from? Around the time the movie was released, an FBI spokesperson told the media that Frank occasionally gave anti-fraud lectures to FBI trainees at Quantico, but not because he worked for them. He offered to do it for free because he claimed he thought of it as restitution for his crimes, but they didn't pay him or even give him travel expenses, and he certainly never helped out on cases, and he never received the four commendations the movie claims. Call us crazy, but we're starting to suspect that the guy who made a career out of lying is a liar. Damn, who raised you? Who raised you indeed, Frank? Oh, right. In the movie, Christopher Walken plays Abagnale's father, and the emotional through-line is about Frank's lifelong need to make him proud. It's sweet, it's touching, and it's a lie. Frank's dad died in 1972 while Frank Jr. was in jail, meaning he never saw him again after running away. For the record, we at Weird History are good with this change. Making your father proud is a much more Spielberg move. And while we're on the subject, there are some other disputes concerning the film's narrative of Frank's childhood. For example, Abagnale claimed that between ages 16 and 20, he traveled the world, pulled off dozens of identities, seduced airline stewardesses, masqueraded as doctors, and so on. But records show Frank was imprisoned for over two years during this period. In other words, he couldn't have been gallivanting around the world because he was behind bars. With that, the movie's whole timeline collapses. After all, you can't impersonate a Georgia surgeon while you're sitting in a French jail cell. We checked, that commute would be awful, even for a fake pilot. The movie paints Frank as a once-in-a-century criminal mastermind who outsmarted international banks. But historians digging through actual financial records found that the losses attributed to him were dramatically lower than he claims. The supposed millions he defrauded during this period simply don't show up in any accounting. He was never on the FBI's most wanted list, and he never cashed 17,000 bogus checks. Heck, he didn't even cash 17. As for his alleged affiliation with the FBI, they certainly never would have brought him onto the force because he was so good at forgery they figured it was a better idea to hire him. He stole regular things like cars, art, and photography equipment. This isn't blockbuster movie criminality. It's a moderately okay Law & Order episode you forgot a minor celebrity cameo'd in from 2006. Frank's autobiography paints his youth as a chaotic fall from privilege after his parents' divorce. But many details, including how he survived, how he traveled, and how quickly he escalated into high-level cons, contradict the known record. Little things don't line up. Big things don't line up. Most things don't line up. To be fair, some things in the movie did happen. He did forge checks. He did impersonate people occasionally. He did commit crimes, get arrested, and serve time, including in France and Sweden. But the truth is far smaller in scale, far less glamorous, and far less suited for a Leonardo DiCaprio prestige biopic. And honestly, that makes it weirder. Frank Abagnale didn't need to be an expert conman. He just needed to convince Hollywood he was an expert conman, which isn't really that hard. After all, it's Hollywood. Much of Abagnale's modern fame actually comes from giving paid speeches about fraud prevention, speeches that often repeat stories already proven false. Many of those companies hired him, believing his legend was real. It wasn't until journalists began piecing together his actual history that people realized his post-crime career was built on the same shaky mythology as his book. So why did people believe him for so long? A few reasons. His stories were colorful and quotable. Audiences love a charming criminal. There's also the fact that Steven Spielberg gave the myth the biggest cosine imaginable. Once a legend hits the big screen, it tends to stick. Also worth mentioning is that Frank's autobiography was likely published before anyone seriously fact-checked random memoirs. If you're gonna lie that big, you shouldn't be surprised people are gonna figure it out once you get Leonardo DiCaprio involved. Frank Abagnale wasn't a genius impersonator or a master of deception. He was a guy who made up stories, and those stories were repeated, amplified, adapted, and eventually immortalized. The biggest con he ever pulled wasn't forging checks. It was forging his own legacy. Catch Me If You Can is still a great movie. It's fun, it's stylish, and it's one of the best cat-and-mouse films of the 2000s. But if you walk away thinking it's a true story, well, Frank Abagnale conned you too. So the moral? Don't believe everything you see in the movies. And if someone tells you they passed a bar exam in two weeks, maybe Google that.