Frank Abagnale Quotes
-
There's no such thing as a foolproof system. That idea fails to take into account the creativity of fools.
-
Criminals look at identity theft and say only 1 in 700 criminals gets convicted of it. And they look at check forgery and they know that for every 1,400 forgers arrested, only about 123 get convicted and about 26 go to jail. So the rewards are great, but the risks are very slim. So that's one of the reasons that make it very popular.
-
Had I been older, I would've never been able to pull it off because I would've analyzed it to death. When I was 16, there was no such thing as 'what if.'
-
The law sometimes sleeps; it never dies.
-
In all the years I've taught at the FBI Academy, I've only seen crime get easier, faster, and harder to detect.
-
The truth is, your identity already has been stolen.
-
There are many ways to manipulate chip cards. For example, a number of years ago when American Express issued the first chip card, criminals would take a small hammer with a little device and bang the chip to destroy it without hurting the physical appearance of the card.
-
People say that life is short, but it isn't short. It's very long.
-
I stole every nickel and blew it on fine threads, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes, and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe and basked on all the world's most famous beaches.
-
You have to be smarter and a wiser businessperson and consumer. You have to learn to protect yourself through education.
-
If I check into a hotel, a lot of times, they know who I am.
-
It's really frustrating when you're an identity-theft victim, and you go to the police and you say, 'This guy in Florida, he stole my name and got a credit card - this is his address,' and they say, 'We don't have jurisdiction in Florida. You need to go to the FBI.'
-
Everything I have today was because of the love of a woman.
-
The biggest thing that concerns me is when we start getting countries using cybercrime to shut down infrastructure, electricity, communications systems, the Internet, et cetera.
-
Every case involving cybercrime that I've been involved in, I've never found a master criminal sitting somewhere in Russia or Hong Kong or Beijing. It always ends up that somebody at the company did something they weren't supposed to do. They read an email, went to a website they weren't supposed to.
-
I teach ethics at the FBI academy, which is ironic.
-
Unlike most divorces, where the children were usually the first to know, my parents were very good about keeping that a secret.
-
People have found very significant and simple ways to cheat their employer and get money out of their employers, and many companies lack good internal controls.
-
It's about taking the time to research and think things out. Honest people and criminals do the same thing; just the direction, good or bad, is different.
-
I'm so different from the egotistical, self-centred person I was when I did those things. And to watch someone acting out your memories on the screen is like reliving it. Like someone taking you back and showing you what you did.
-
Nothing has brought me more love, joy and peace than being a good husband and good daddy.
-
I owe a debt to my country 800 times greater than I could ever repay.
-
I use a credit card for everything - and I choose one of the ones which gives you money back.
-
I went to the library and learned how checks work. I found out that routing numbers are like zip codes: the checks are sent to the bank that correlates to the routing number. If I manipulate those numbers to a bank far away, it would take longer to get back to the bank, which gave me more time to write more bad checks.