Podcast: auto accident scam - fraud prevention

[00:00:01] HOST: Coming up on this episode of AARP's Perfect Scam. [00:00:05] I pulled into a lane and I saw them behind me, then they raced ahead of me. I made a right hand turn and

they raced ahead of me, said "You hit me! And I have a wife and two kids in the car." And they jumped out and then there's another guy in there with tattoos. [00:00:19] She

was out alone, by the way, Will. [00:00:20] I was alone. [00:00:22] HOST: Not all scam artists come in the form on anonymous calls or mysterious emails. Some scammers operate in broad

daylight. On today's episode, we bring you the story of George and Sandra targeted by scammers in the middle of the day on an LA street. It might not be where you’d expect to get

scammed, but as we've learned, sometimes scammers can strike pretty much anywhere, anytime, and often when you're not expecting it. For The Perfect Scam, I'm your host, Will

Johnson, and I'd like to welcome back my cohost and AARP's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador, Frank Abagnale, Frank. [00:00:54] Frank Abagnale: Great to be with you, Will. Thanks.

[00:00:55] HOST: Good to have you back in the studio with us, talking about frauds and scams, but first, as we like to do, we like to ask Frank questions. I should just call this part of the

show, Ask Frank Questions. You spent liked 16 to 21, life of crime, if I can call it that. You did some time, you got out, you got married and you've been with the FBI now for how many

years? [00:01:15] Frank Abagnale: Frank Abagnale: 41. [00:01:15] HOST: 41 years. And over that time, when you were, I guess in your 20s it was you, not long after you had gotten out of

prison in Atlanta and gone to work for the FBI, you told me a little bit about this before we taped today's show, but you were on the Today Show and then Johnny Carson noticed you?

[00:01:33] Frank Abagnale: Yeah that's... [00:01:33] HOST: Can we talk about this, because I think it's really cool. [00:01:36] Frank Abagnale: That's how the Catch Me If You

Can, the movie really all started is I was on the Today Show back with Tom Brokaw back in the '70s, and I was actually on there talking about counterfeit money and, so we were talking

about how to spot a counterfeit bill. It was Christmastime and we were doing this segment about it and I remember, I had a bunch of, they had a bunch of bills in back of me that were

counterfeit, and towards the end of the segment, Tom Brokaw said, "Before I close," he said, "you come to the government with a kind of an unusual background. Will you tell me

a little bit about that?" So, I started to say about how I, how it all came about, and Johnny Carson was watching it, so he sent out a thing and told them to send me that tape. So, he

watched the tape and the next thing, I got a phone call from Johnny Carson's assistant that said he would like to have you on the show. And I'm going, to talk about what? Well

he'd like you talk a little bit about your life. And I said, "Well what's, what's involved with that?" "Well you need to come out for an interview, we

don't pay for that, so you’d have to come out on your own expense. If we decide to have you on the show and we invite you back we will pay your travel expenses." And I said, I just

said you know, "I'm out there all the time. Can I come by for an interview when I'm out there?" Said, of course. I went out and did the interview, and they invited me on

the show. And it was the first of 9 times I was on Johnny Carson, but the first night I went on, I did take my wife with me because it was such a big event, and we, she was sitting in the

green room, the Pointer Sisters were on, they were at the top of the game then... [00:03:01] HOST: This was the '70s, right? [00:03:02] Frank Abagnale: Right, and they were all in their

gowns and ready to come on, and I thought I'd be on about 5 or 6 minutes, and they, Johnny Carson, after the first segment said, we're going to go with the rest of the show with

him, so the Pointer Sisters never got on, and I was on the show. Well after that, they got like 300 calls asking where can I buy this book? Only the switchboard at NBC saying there is no

book, he was just talking about his life. So, it was Johnny Carson who really said to me, you need to write a book about your life and you need to write it now, not when you're 70, and

so, Catch Me If You Can came from being on the Tonight Show. [00:03:38] HOST: And did Spielberg come across you from the Tonight Show or the book or... [00:03:41] Frank Abagnale: From the

Tonight Show is where he originally came across the story and then of course later the book, and so Spielberg, being the wonderful man that he is, he remembered where that all started. So on

the night that he finished the final edit on the movie, he had a DVD burned and he signed it and sent it over to Johnny Carson's home and saying to him, "This would not be

possible had it not been for you," and he signed it and sent it to his house. So, he was one of the first people actually to get to see the movie. [00:04:07] HOST: It's an amazing

story just how you all of a sudden realized that, or I'm guessing, all of a sudden but then over time also that you realized that your story had some real impact on, on people who were

learning about it and also just wildly entertaining. [00:04:20] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, and I was kind of the opposite. I was more about, I don't want anybody to know this, you know,

I'm trying to hide my past. I don't want anybody to know who I am or what I did and, so it was the opposite. [00:04:30] HOST: It must have been a relief almost to finally realize

you could just talk about it and accept that you were moving on? [00:04:34] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, I don't know that I've handled fame very well because I don't like the fact

that everybody knows who I am, and all that. That's very difficult to deal with, and I think to myself, if I deal with it on such a small level, what does someone like a Leonardo

DiCaprio or somebody like that have to deal with every day of, of their life? I think it would be really, really tough to be that famous and that well known to where everyone knows who you

are, no matter where you go and what you do. [00:04:59] HOST: Yeah. Alright, well let's get into today's story and again, a couple out in Santa Monica, California, and a lot of the

scams we cover on the show here take place over the phone, over the internet, they're faceless if you will, this one is up close and in person, and because the potential scam victims

come face-to-face with the scammers, it has an added degree of danger to it. On today's episode, meet George and his wife, Sandra. (MUSIC SEGUE) [00:05:24] HOST: Hi, George. This is

Will at AARP, Will Johnson, how are you? [00:05:28] George: Oh fine, for a 92-year-old war veteran from World War II. We're doing well. [00:05:33] HOST: That's, you sound great for

a 92-year-old war veteran. [00:05:36] HOST: George and Sandra are both retired. Not content sitting at home, they volunteer together at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. [00:05:43] HOST:

And how long have you two been married? [00:05:44] Sandra: Four years. We're newlyweds. [00:05:47] HOST: Congratulations. [00:05:47] George: We're the widow and widower. [00:05:48]

HOST: That's, well congratulations. As newlyweds. And George, you're 92, Sandra like 25? [00:05:53] Sandra: (laugh) No, I'm 79. [00:05:57] HOST: After one of their volunteer

days at the cemetery, they were driving home on a typical, beautiful blue sky, Santa Monica afternoon, windows rolled down. [00:06:04] George: And suddenly in, on the passenger side, I

looked out and this man with a beard sort of, I would say youngish, yelled out, go ahead, hon, and say what, what did he yell out? [00:06:19] Sandra: He said, "You hit me! And I have a

witness." And I said, "I did not hit you," and I kept driving, and then this other white Maserati they... [00:06:27] George: Yeah, while we're driving... [00:06:30]

Sandra: And says, "I saw that." [00:06:32] George: So he saw that, and I said, "We're, we're going to go to the police station." [00:06:37] HOST: So, George,

you were smart enough to probably say okay, these, these bearded fellows are connected and this is a scam. [00:06:43] George: It certainly looked like that. [00:06:45] Sandra: Yeah, actually

said to them, this is a scam. [00:06:48] George: What they saw was two older people in a Lexus, what we had our license plate with the Disabled Handicap on the license plate. [00:06:59] But

we knew exactly where the police station was, and we got there and, and the police said, oh yes, they're out there, and he gave us a special number to call the next time it happens to

get a police car right away. [00:07:13] HOST: And let me get this straight. So you drove to the police station. So that sounds very scary and also very smart of you, just to do exactly what

you did. [00:07:20] George: Exactly. [00:07:21] HOST: And then, but they didn't go all the way to the police station. They didn't... [00:07:24] George: No, they veered off...

[00:07:26] Sandra: I saw them in my rear-view mirror. He, he followed me, and then about halfway down he suddenly wasn't there anymore. [00:07:33] HOST: Oh, so he knew. [00:07:34]

Sandra: They put these white streaks, I don't know how they did it, but somehow, they got these white streaks on the car. And I said to George, put your finger on that, I bet it wipes

right off. Of course it did. [00:07:47] HOST: Sure, so maybe before you left where, where you were at the VA or somewhere along the way they did this to say, oh... [00:07:53] George:

That's right, we could have done something on that area. [00:07:56] HOST: I wonder if their car had like a, a crumpled fender or something that they had already previously... [00:08:02]

George: They could have (inaudible), but the next car that said he was the witness was a Maserati. But he had a beard, the same similar type as the first man. [00:08:14] HOST: Well beards

are all the rage these days. So... [00:08:16] George: Oh yeah. (MUSIC SEGUE) [00:08:20] HOST: George and Sandra played it safe and made a smart move, driving to the police station without

stopping. But here's where the credit goes to Sandra. It wasn't the first time this had happened to her. And the first time, years earlier wasn't so smooth. [00:08:32] Sandra:

So, a similar thing, I pulled into a lane and I saw them behind me, but there was plenty of time to stop and I did not feel anything, and then they raced ahead of me. I made a right had

turn, raced ahead of me and said, "You hit me, and I have a wife and two kids in the car," and they, they jumped out and then there's another guy in there with tattoos.

[00:08:53] George: Out alone by the way, Will. [00:08:55] Sandra: I was alone. And so he, at that time I was, you know, really shaken and I said, "Well I don't see anything,"

and he said, "Oh look there," and there was this blue paint on my tire. And his car was blue. So he said, you know, "I'm going to call the police on you or if you want to

get in the car, we'll go to a place and we’ll, you know get it fixed and, and you can just pay us so you don't have to..." [00:09:23] George: (laugh) [00:09:25] Sandra:

"...you know deal with the insurance company." So I was so new at all this, I was all ready to make them out a check. [00:09:30] George: My wife had just been recently widowed, so

I wasn't with her or anything, this is a few, a few years back. Go ahead, honey, I'm sorry to interrupt. [00:09:39] HOST: But so, let me back up. So it sounds like, so they said

you hit the car, you got in the car and they took you to get money out to pay them money? [00:09:48] Sandra: Yeah, he jumped in the car and the guy, the other, there was another driver in

his car, and they followed, they followed me. [00:09:55] HOST: Oh, but one of the guys got in your car or they got in their car? [00:09:58] Sandra: Yeah. [00:09:59] George: They were

intimidating her. [00:10:01] HOST: They got in your car. [00:10:02] Sandra: Yeah. And I'm sure they had it all set up with the place they took me to which was a long drive, about 45

minutes. [00:10:09] HOST: And then you got money out, you paid them money. Do you remember how much they asked for? [00:10:13] Sandra: I was going to hand them a check, and then I called my

bank and they said don't you give them that check. [00:10:19] HOST: Oh, so they, so you never, so great. Good, that's a, so you, you did not pay them any money, and... [00:10:26]

Sandra: No, I was about it. [00:10:27] HOST: Yeah, sure. And then, so fast forward several years or many years later and here you and George are and you know exactly what's going on.

[00:10:35] George: Déjà vu, déjà vu. [00:10:37] Sandra: That's exactly it, it was the same tone of voice. I would just hit me. [00:10:40] HOST: It's tough because a lot of scams

like this, they fall into a realm of, well, you know, accidents do happen. Sometimes we might hit something lightly in a car and not even know about it, but this one smells fishy. [00:10:56]

Sandra: The best thing is if you can get to a police station. [00:10:59] HOST: Yeah. Absolutely. You know the, a lot of the, again, a lot of the scams and frauds we've been talking

about have been over the phone or over the computer. This is one that's in person and could have dangerous consequences. [00:11:12] George: Very dangerous. [00:11:14] HOST: I'm

glad you're, I'm glad you're both okay. (MUSIC SEGUE) [00:11:17] HOST: So, with prior experience and a lot of savvy between the two of them, George and Sandra escaped this hit

and run scam. But as the local police told them, it's not an uncommon crime, and they were lucky to get home unscathed, unharmed, and none the poorer. (MUSIC SEGUE) [00:11:35] HOST:

And I'm back with the AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador, Frank Abagnale. Frank, this is kind of a scary story. They both come out of it unscathed, but Sandra talks about an early

experience, earlier experience where she wasn't quite so lucky. But it's dangerous because these are criminals in person. We talk a lot about internet and email and phone fraud.

[00:11:57] Frank Abagnale: Well these scams are all based on simply intimidation. And actually, there was a third player in her first scam, and probably would have been in the second one as

well, and that was the garage they went to or this place where they were taking her to fix a car, why it was 45 minutes away, they're part of it, so then they bring it in there to get a

quote, how much would it cost to fix this, and they get the quote from them and they make it look like it's legitimate and get the money. But all three of them were probably involved

in that, that scam. You know, they're all based, these types of scams and they come in different, different varieties. I remember a couple of years ago walking down the street in

Manhattan, and this gentleman walked out of a liquor store. It kind of looked like he was probably a little drunk and disorderly and he bumped into me purposely and dropped a brown bag and

it broke and he said to me, that's, "I just bought that bottle of whiskey. It cost me $20 and you..." [00:12:50] HOST: It's all your fault? [00:12:51] Frank Abagnale:

It's all your fault and you need to give me the $20 to replace it. And so, I kind of kicked the bag around a little, and I said, "Sir, that's water in there. I said

you're just trying to scam out of $20 and that's an old scam." I said, "I'm not falling for it," and I just kept walking. [00:13:06] HOST: You can't fool

Frank, people, alright? [00:13:07] Frank Abagnale: I just kept walking. But I mean, that's how they work. And most people would have said, you know, I don't want to get, seen with

this person. I'm going to give them their $20 and you know, but they're all based on trying to intimidate you. Getting in the car with you is part of the intimidation. Now the

whole thing is based on you're going to give them some money cause you're intimidated by them. [00:13:26] HOST: And intimidation is used obviously online and over the phone as

well. [00:13:30] Frank Abagnale: Exactly. I mean we now have people actually that literally threaten to kidnap you on the phone or kidnap a loved one of yours unless you pay a ransom or

cause you bodily harm unless you pay them something. Again, you know, the best thing to do in those cases is to report it to the police, so that they, they are aware of it and also, they can

take steps to make sure that it's not a actual really a, someone threatening your life. [00:13:57] HOST: And this couple, George and Sandra uh drive to the police station and luckily,

they knew where the police station was. They, they told the, the person who was doing this to them, they were doing that. Was that a good idea or... [00:14:08] Frank Abagnale: I thought it

was a great idea. Before I'd ever got in the car I would have just drove away and, but I would have headed to the police station, and even if they, and I would tell them, I'm going

to the police station, and you know, again they followed just for a short period of time and left. They weren't about to go to the police station with them. [00:14:23] HOST: And again,

this is a, a crime that might have been perpetrated against them because they were older. I mean George thought maybe because they had the handicap license plate. [00:14:31] Frank Abagnale:

Right, and, and they're very easy to intimidate. It would be hard to intimidate some maybe young couple who would have said, I'm not buying that, and we'll just go to the

police right now. He, I'm sure they looked at this might be someone easier to intimidate and obviously they were not. [00:14:47] HOST: This kind of gets into this whole real-world

scams. You were talking about the guy with the liquor bottle, but scams have been around since what, like humans have been around? I don't what like you know biblical scams were.

[00:14:59] Frank Abagnale: And you know, I think it, but all scams are based on 1) building confidence with someone, 2) sometimes intimidation, certainly urgency; it has to be done right

now, right away, and you have to give me the money right away. Those are all red flags that when you start to see those elements of it, you have to start thinking that somebody's

actually scamming you or trying to scam you. [00:15:24] HOST: When, and when you got into scams, did you, were you aware of this idea of con men or confidence men? Or were you doing

something that simply seemed like, hey I can do this. I'm getting away with it a little bit. [00:15:35] Frank Abagnale: I looked at it more of, because I was pretending to be somebody I

wasn't, or I was going in a bank to cash a check, it was more to me, just the act. It wasn't more about, I'm going to con this teller into cashing the check, it was more

about I'm going to go in and, and deal with whatever I have to deal with. In other words, whatever they say to me, I'll come up with some answer for that. So, I don't think it

was me premeditating I'm going to go in and con somebody out of this, or I'm going to convince somebody of this. I think I just took everything and adlibbed it and went in and

whatever I had to say just to make them believe it, I would say, but it wasn't kind of premeditated. A lot of scams are premeditated and there's a, almost an act to it, a structure

to it, and you play it and you practice it, and then you uh perpetrate it against people. [00:16:20] HOST: And with this one, they go to the police department and they say, oh yeah, these

guys, there's a lot of this going on right now where somebody's hitting another car or saying they got hit by a car and then having a witness pull up from... [00:16:29] Frank

Abagnale: Right, and the police know, the police, like me, have heard all these scams and that they know all these scams, so you know, they would have recognized it for what it was. And of

course, they would have never, the two guys would have never went there because they probably would have got arrested. [00:16:43] HOST: And I go back to, with this one though, it was in

person and you would obviously always want to be cautious and, as you say, drive away or in their case, go to the police station. It's not worth trying to figure out what's going

on. [00:16:54] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, and I will say that most of the time the majority of confidence men, con artists, scam artists, are not violent people, so most of the time it's

just based on trying to intimidate you, but if you walk away or whatever, most of the time no one's going to cause you any bodily harm, cause they're not that type of criminal and

they, so it's much better as long as you feel it's safe to just simply drive away and do like they did. [00:17:22] HOST: Was there uh as, as you were talking about when, when you

were doing it and cashing checks, was it a high for you, do you think at the time? [00:17:31] Frank Abagnale: No, I don't think... [00:17:31] HOST: As a young person? [00:17:32] Frank

Abagnale: You know, I think a lot of people and I would admit that if it was, but a lot of people say, well, did you get great satisfaction, but boy, did you walk out, in other words and

say, well, I really took those people for their money. It wasn't, it wasn't that. It was more about me surviving, so here's another way for me to get money cause I need money

to live on. And it wasn't that I walked out and felt some satisfaction that I, I took that person. As a matter of fact, it was a little bit more of, a little bit of guilt to it, and

certainly as I, as I got older. What was real funny about and I truly, sincerely mean this, that had I, at that time in my life walked into a dry cleaner, for example, and no one was at the

counter, and I happened to look over and the register drawer was open and there was all this cash sitting there, I wouldn't have taken any cash cause I would have said to myself, 1)

that's stealing, 2) the people that own this little dry cleaner, they're going to be out the money, and so I always looked at everything as an adolescent. Okay to steal from a big

bank, not okay to steal from mom and pop. You know, I convinced a bail bondsman in, and when you read the book, Catch Me If You Can, Bailout Bailey was his name in Boston when I did get

arrested, but just overnight, and ... [00:18:49] HOST: Bailout Bailey. [00:18:50] Frank Abagnale: Bailout Bailey was the bail bondsman, and in that incident, just so you know, I was in the

Boston Logan Airport, I had gotten onboard was then National Airlines from New York to Boston, and they got a little suspicious in the control tower, so they asked this police at the Boston

Police Department to pick me up and question me. So I got off the plane which the Boston Police Department is patrolled by the Massachusetts State Police, the state trooper took me into the

police station there in the airport and said, "I need to verify you are a pilot with the airline. There's a little suspicion that you're not." And I said, "Well I

don't know, well here's my ID card." It was 11 o'clock at night, so they got a little suspicious, they did stop one pilot to come in and ask me some questions that were,

what's the rate of climb on this aircraft and things like that. [00:19:39] HOST: But you had done your research on it. [00:19:40] Frank Abagnale: Frank Abagnale: But I'd done all

the research, so the guy said, I think he's a pilot, you know. So, they decided that they weren't convinced, so they said they were going to take, lock me up overnight for

vagrancy. Now this is back when you could do vagrancy even though I had money in my pocket and all that. So I got thrown into what's called the Charles Street Jail in Boston which is an

old famous jailhouse, and but I was in this pilot's uniform. So I'm sitting in the cell, now it's like 1 o'clock in the morning and I hear this guy talking to the guy in

the cell next to me, and it's the bail bondsman. So he looks over and he sees me in the pilot's uniform and he said to me, "Whoa and airline pilot in jail? What did you

do?" So, I immediately said, "Well I was in the airport and this guy was mistreating his girlfriend, and I got in a fight with him and hit him and they arrested me, locked me up

under some vagrancy charge." [00:20:28] HOST: So this just came out. [00:20:29] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, just out, so court tomorrow. [00:20:31] HOST: Yeah. [00:20:32] Frank Abagnale:

"Well you don't need to spend the night in jail, you make, you can make some bail," and I said, "Well how much would bail be?" "For something like that,"

he said, you know, "I'll write the bond, but you need to have about $500." And I said, "Well I don't have, you know, I don't have any money with me. I do have a

checkbook, but they have it downstairs." "Well, I'll take a check from you." So I went down, I wrote him a check, and I got out of jail. You can imagine the FBI when the

case say he bail bond, cause he got bonded out and then they say, how did he pay for the bond? He wrote them a check. And they said, good for the bail bondsman, he'll learn a lesson.

But instead, about a week later I mailed the bail bondsman the $500, cause I didn't want him to be out any money. [00:21:10] HOST: He did you a real favor by getting you out of the

Charles Street Jail. So, as you're telling this story, I wonder if there's like a modern-day equivalent of the airline pilot, or if pilots still have that sort of uh cache in

society today? [00:21:25] Frank Abagnale: You know, that's the other thing. I thought Stephen Spielberg did such a wonderful job of explaining what travel was like back in that era, how

pilots, airline pilots especially were such an, such, looked at with such esteem, and it had so much power being the pilot. You know, everything I did was more about just opportunities, so

when I first started writing checks at, immediately at the beginning, I would go in a bank and try to convince the teller that cash--, and these were like $25 checks, $30 checks, with some

story about you know, I needed to get home or something. All I had was my checkbook. And they would always say to me, you have to go speak to that man or woman sitting behind a desk.

[00:22:05] HOST: Which you probably didn't want to do, right? [00:22:06] Frank Abagnale: No, no, I did, but I'd go over and I'd try to, you know it was like a manager or

assistant manager. And many times they said, nope, can't do it, you don't have a bank account with us, you know, can't do it. But once in a while I'd win, and the

guy'd say, I'll do it this one time for you, I'll initial okay on this, give it back to the teller but don't, you can't do that again. And then here I am walking

down the street and I saw this airline crew, and I thought to myself, wow, if I could get a uniform like that, and then I walk in the bank as an airline pilot... [00:22:35] HOST: Boom.

[00:22:35] Frank Abagnale: ... when I want to cash a check, instant credibility. And it had nothing to do with I'm going to get on planes, ride around the world for free, stay in

hotels, it was all about, if I get that uniform, I can go in, write these checks. So I did get the uniform and I ended up walking in a bank, it was like night and day. I just walked up to

the teller, oh sure, you have your company ID? Yeah, no problem, we'll cash a check for you. And, and I couldn’t believe that they were really just seeing the uniform. I had, I was

totally irrelevant. It was the uniform they saw, and I realized that at a very early age the power of that, that uniform. [00:23:09] HOST: So whether it was you as a young man dressed in a

pilot's uniform, and not to relate you to these fellows at all or these guys pulling up in a car, it, it, I mean it's a lot of acting. [00:23:20] Frank Abagnale: Right...

[00:23:21] HOST: Right? I mean it's like con men are all just actors. [00:23:24] Frank Abagnale: Right. There's a great... [00:23:25] HOST: Or maybe if you're on the phone

telling somebody a story and they've got jury duty, or they've got this or that... [00:23:28] Frank Abagnale: There, there's a great on, when people buy on the DVD and they

have the second disk which is the interviews with all the actors, myself, and Stephen Spielberg, some of the FBI people; it's a great little disk and on there is an interview with Leo,

and Leo says, "You have to understand that the reality is, Frank Abagnale was probably the greatest actor that ever lived because he truly acted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. From the

moment he woke up, he was onstage till he went to sleep." And you know, you didn't think of it back then, but he was, he was right. You were constantly, constantly acting. And you

can't differ from it, because if you ... [00:24:04] HOST: You could have had a whole different career. You could have been in Hollywood. [00:24:06] Frank Abagnale: You either play the

role or you don't play the role, so you can't say I'm going to play the role this morning but not this afternoon. You have to play the role the entire time. [00:24:13] HOST:

What was the hardest role to play among the different occupations that you got into? I feel like the doctor was, was always... [00:24:18] Frank Abagnale: The doctor was the most, the most

difficult. [00:24:20] HOST: Because you must have had to avoid a lot of... [00:24:21] Frank Abagnale: Avoid a lot of things, and I was like, you know, again, everything I did I fell into. If

I had premeditated to be a doctor or be the lawyer, it would have never happened, so I moved in an apartment complex in Atlanta, and it was a singles' complex which they had back then,

and on the application, it asked occupation. Well I began to write down airline pilot because that's what I'd been tending to be for a couple of years, but then it says

supervisor's name, contact number, so I thought to myself, I'm going to have to come up with something that would be impossible to check out, something would justify why I drive an

expensive car, wear expensive clothes. So, I wrote just in the box, doctor. Nothing else. I had an inquisitive apartment manager and she goes, "Ooh, I see you're a doctor."

"Yes." "What type of doctor are you?" So I, first thing came to my mind, I just said, "Well I'm a medical doctor, however, I'm not practicing medicine

right now. I left my practice in Los Angeles to come to Atlanta to invest in some real estate holdings I have. I won't be practicing for a while." "Oh, how interesting. Well,

what type of medical doctor are you?" And then I figured being a singles' complex, I'd say pediatrician, cause there were no kids. So I said I was a pediatrician. [00:25:28]

HOST: That's a great idea. [00:25:28] Frank Abagnale: So, I moved in as Dr. Frank Williams, pediatrician. Now everyone I met just thought I was a pedia--, a pediatrician. And shortly

thereafter, a real doctor moves in who is a pediatrician in the apartment below me, so someone tells him, I'm a doctor. So he comes up to introduce himself and I get to know him. He

takes me up to the hospital where he works. I meet the hospital staff, and then the next thing I know he's saying to me, "Hey, would you mind covering a shift at the hospital for a

couple weeks? A doctor's had a death in his family, he's returning home. It's just an administrative job, it doesn't require licensing from your other state or anything,

it's just an administrative position." And I thought... [00:26:08] HOST: Perfect, sure, why not? [00:26:09] Frank Abagnale: Well, I was always up to the challenge to see if

I'd get away with it or not, so I went, I went and did it. But again, I always try to tell, you know, people always say, when I saw the movie, and then I read the book and then when you

read the book you understand how you really kind of fell into all these things. It wasn't that you planned them and you did them. They're all things I fell into that and, and that

was the opportunist in me. They were just opportunities that I saw and took, took advantage of. [00:26:36] HOST: Frank, I'm afraid that we've digressed once again, but that's

actually the point of the show and the point of having you here as my cohost. So, hopefully our listeners have learned something from the story of George and Sandra, and also been

entertained by your, your experiences. But be on the lookout for, for any--, anybody telling you that, that you just ran into them or at least be skeptical as you always say, too, right?

[00:26:58] Frank Abagnale: Absolutely, and again, I'm not going to hand somebody money without uh you know just say, well, I think the damage costs $100, you owe me $100. You know, but

I would be a little cautioned about even though I'm saying to you, let me just take you to this body shop which might be 10 minutes away or 40 minutes away, that, that party could just

be part of the scam, so then you think you're, you're maybe, well this guy's right. I did hit him and that's how much it cost to fix. That's all a part of the scam.

[00:27:25] HOST: Frank Abagnale is one of the world's foremost experts on the topic of fraud, scams, and also my cohost here, and the AARP's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador. So

thanks, as always for joining us. [00:27:36] Frank Abagnale: Thanks Will, and great being with you. [00:27:37] HOST: If you or someone you know has been a victim of a scam, please call

AARP's Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. [00:27:49] HOST: Alright, I'd like to thank our producers, Julie Getz and Brook Ellis, our audio engineer, Julio Gonzales, and

of course, my cohost, Frank Abagnale. Be sure to subscribe, download, rate, and of course like our podcast on Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. END OF TRANSCRIPT