It seems like the perfect life.
In the movie Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, glides into Miami International Airport in a perfectly-pressed pilot's uniform with four girls on each arm and a wide grin on his face. After running away from home at the age of 16, Abagnale poses as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer. He bounces checks to the tune of $1.3 million. He wields his charm as a deadly weapon that disarms everyone around him.
But according to the real Frank Abagnale, director Steven Spielberg "never met me, he never interviewed me, and he decided to tell my story from his point of view."
Abagnale delivered a keynote speech in front of a captivated audience at the Wharton Technology Conference Friday in which he told his version of his own story.
"I cried myself to sleep until I was 19 years old," Abagnale said. "I never got to go to a senior prom, a high school football game or be in a relationship with someone my own age."
Many attendees of the conference expected Abagnale, the owner of the consulting firm Abagnale & Associates, which advises companies on fraud prevention, to speak more about the security challenges businesses face in today's world.
But instead, Abagnale discussed the life depicted in Catch Me If You Can, including some of the illegal exploits that made him famous and ultimately led to his arrest.
For instance, he explained that he would pocket the blank deposit slips available at banks and magnetically encode them with his account number using a machine he purchased. He would later replace these slips and wait for customers to unknowingly deposit funds into his account.
"I did a lot of things that just hadn't been done before," he said.
But Abagnale explained that he does not avoid responsibility for his crimes.
"I have turned down three pardons from three presidents because I don't believe a piece of paper will excuse my actions," he said. "Only my actions will excuse my actions."
Now a frequent lecturer at the FBI Academy, Abagnale added in an interview following the event that he didn't want his crimes to seem glamorous.
"I don't want the audience to think I'm glorifying what I did," he said. "What I did with my life [after his crimes] is what impresses me the most."
First-year MBA student Neal Mueller said that Abagnale's speech was one of the main reasons he attended the day-long conference.
"I want[ed] to see the man behind the movie," he said.
