Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Bill Van Tassel
PORTLAND — Both this reporter and his son have had their credit cards compromised. Purchases were made in far off places like Romania and Japan. The credit card companies noticed the irregularities and contacted us to verify the purchases as fraudulent. When we did, they informed us that we didn’t have to pay for the devious debits to our accounts. Why? There are five federal laws that protect consumers from credit card fraud.
During a recent interview with Frank Abagnale, the former scam artist said one of the best ways consumers can protect themselves is to get rid of debit cards, which don’t have the same protection for users that credit cards do.
Abagnale, whose early life of fraud and scamming was the basis of the movie “Catch Me If You Can,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, was invited to Maine by AARPto speak on identity theft and scams aimed at the elderly. He spoke at the University of Southern Maine on April 20, and also met with Maine Attorney General Janet Mills. Abganale spent five years in prison and was an advisor for the FBI before starting his own consulting business.
“The debit card is one of the worst things given to consumers in our time,” Abagnale said in the interview. He doesn’t have one. He said credit card abuse is protected by law. “I have no liability,” he said.
There are five laws regulating the use and abuse of credit cards. The new chip in the debit card offers protection, but not to the user, but to the retailer or service the user is making a payment to.
Besides not using debit cards, Abagnale recommends signing on to a credit monitoring service. “It’s great protection for fifteen dollars a month,” said. He said that occasionally freezing credit cards is also a good idea.
Other tips including getting a micro-shredder, the kind the FBI uses. One of the things that should go in there is the label on the magazines delivered to your home by subscription — there’s enough information on the label for identity theft.
Abagnale also does not write many checks. “Somewhere along the line that the check travels, someone can get the information off it.” Abagnale knows something about checks — it was using forged checks that got him started in fraud when he was a teenager.
He had run away from home following his parents’ divorce and needed a way to survive in New York City. Once day he was in a bank, and having a hard time getting a check cashed. He saw a nicely uniformed airline pilot who wasn’t having the same problem getting his check cashed. “If I had a uniform like that, I could get a check cashed more easily,” Abagnale recalled thinking. He said it was then he added using alternate identities to his scamming repertoire.
Until he was arrested in France in 1969, Abagnale had spent about six years posing in eight identities including an airline pilot, a lawyer, a physician and a teacher. His first scam was at the tender age of 15, when he used his father’s gasoline credit card and figured out a way to get the gas station attendants to include tires and other items, as well as cash back.
“I became pretty good at telling what kind of person could be fooled and who couldn’t,” he said. He also admitted that he could also be a victim of a scam. But he added, “This is a great country. Most Americans are honest.” He referred to a motto made famous by Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify.”
He said he got into scamming as “an opportunist,” he never meant to harm anyone or become a hard-core criminal.
When asked if he’d had to do it over again, what occupation he would have chosen, Abagnale said, “I probably would have gone to college, then run my own business of some kind.”
He said he had the advantage of operating his dishonest lifestyle in his youth and living in “a great county” where a person can start over. learned some life lessons on the way, some of them from five years in prison no doubt.
He said he deserved the prison time. “I believe you commit a crime, you should be punished for it.” He credited the major turnaround from his life of crime to meeting his wife and the growing responsibilities of a family. He has been married for 40 years and he and his wife have three sons.
Abagnale was released from prison in 1974 after five years of a 12-year sentence on the condition that he work without pay with the FBI on scamming and other types of fraud. He still advises the bureau on fraud schemes through his own business, Abagnale Associates.
PHOTO CAPTION: Frank Abagnale speaks about scams and identity fraud at the University of Southern Maine April 20. The former scam artist, whose crimes were made famous in the movie “Catch Me if You Can,” now advises on scams and identity theft and was invited to speak by AARP of Maine. (Photo by Bill Van Tassel)
