the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

I didn't see the movie, and I might when I'm finished with the book. I suspect Hollywood sped up the action in the movie to make it more...whatever movies have to be to get butts in seats these days. The book is a pleasant surprise to me, though.

It's written by the perp himself, and even though he pointed out in the first couple of pages that modesty is not one of his virtues, the tone of the book and his attitude toward others is surprisingly down-to-earth. He isn't the sort of person you'd expect to do even a small fraction of what he did, which--I suppose--is one of the reasons he was so remarkably successful for so long.

OK. I just read through the Wiki writeup of the movie, and yes...it's very altered from the actual story.

In case you aren't familiar with the basic idea, Frank Abagnale, Jr., who looks very mature for his age (16), realizes that he is really into the chicks, and it takes money to keep them happy. He doesn't want to put the necessary time into education to get the jobs that will get him the money and the chicks, so he takes up check-bouncing scams (he calls it "paperhanging") and posing as men of various professions, beginning as an airline pilot (first mate). He uses this one for a while, then stops that and poses as a doctor for a while, then as a university professor, and so on. He conned (and blew) over $2.5 million between the ages of 16 and 21, when the FBI finally caught him.

This is all absolutely true.

When you first hear that synopsis, you think, "No way. How could that many people be that stupid?!"

But as you read the book, you understand that not only were that many people really that easily taken in, but you begin to realize that you would have fallen for it, too. He had a lot of things going for him. He was, to begin with, a natural-born student of human nature. He was clearly a very likeable sort of fellow. Not pushy or arrogant (which you'd expect at the very least, considering what he did), but approachable and perpetually interested in others.

Here's one of the many take-aways from the book: If you want people to like you, be genuinely interested in them. (I think this is because we aren't attracted to people so much because of who they are, but because of who we are when we're with them.)

He's also self-deprecating and amusing. These are admirable qualities. They endear us to people. (Along these lines, I noticed an odd phenomenon a while back: If you make people laugh, they will trust you. I don't know why this works, but it does.)

But back to our friend Frank, who fascinates me. What else does he have going for him? He does these cons not only to get the chicks, to increase his ability to bounce bigger checks, and (in the case of being an "airline pilot," being able to fly anywhere for free, but for the challenge of it. That's right: he commits major felonies all over the US and in Europe just to see if he can. For the thrill, like a chess master possibly meeting his match in the next game. This means that Frank's only real attachments were to the act itself. He was not bound to the money or the possessions he acquired (and lost) along the way, which made him more difficult to corner and even track. When Frank begins to make more money from his hot checks, he stops renting cars and begins buying them and abandoning them when they no longer suit his purposes. He later learns that the FBI was following his trail pretty well until he switched to buying and abandoning, because by the time people found the abandoned car and traced it back to him, his trail had gone cold.

This has another interesting embedded lesson: our attachment to things is generally a liability. Admittedly, most of us aren't trying to stay one step ahead of the FBI, but still...think about it.

And another thing: He worked alone. He was completely autonomous (and self-taught). This gave the FBI nobody to get leads from, except from people he'd swindled.

Also, he was observant. Very, very observant. This fits in with his natural interest in human behavior. He studied other people, listening to how they expressed themselves and interacted, and was able to mimic those ways very convincingly--and of course take advantage of opportunities he noticed.

He was also incredibly smart. One simply does not pull off being a fake airline pilot among other pilots, a fake doctor among other doctors, a fake attorney...you get the picture. You have to do your homework and be bright enough to soak up everything quickly.

And that leads me to the biggest advantage he had: He worked his butt off. He did his homework. For every job he faked, he put in the time around people who did it, watching them. He put in time interviewing them (sometimes posing as a student writing a paper or somesuch). He put in time at the library reading everything he could get his hands on. He kept notes of people he met and details about them in case they came in handy. He noted phrases people used that he didn't understand so he could look them up first chance he got.

At one point, he was hired as a sociology professor to teach two summer classes, so he read the textbooks, highlighted the points he thought were important, and threw in some personal anecdotes to get the students engaged. He taught the classes so well that the prof who'd hired him told him he'd keep his name on file so if a full-time position ever came open, he'd call him.

This is something I've done--on a subject I knew something about, even--and it's work, baby.

He did so much homework in banking that he learned now to give himself the most possible time in one town bouncing checks before he had to move on. He learned what code numbers on a check mean (and that most people handling the checks have no idea what they mean, so they couldn't spot a fake like he could). But anyway...he figured out that all he had to do was, say, create a check that had a bank address in Dallas, but use the state number that would send it to California to be filed, where the sorting machines would run across the next number which would say it should be in Cincinnati, and thus kick it to Ohio, where a clerk would look at the check and think the machines screwed up because it should have gone to Dallas to be cleared, so he'd snail-mail it to Dallas. By the time someone discovered the fraud, he'd bought himself an extra week.*

* None of this works now, btw. I tried it.

Anyway. As I read, I'm moved by his carpe diem approach to life, intrigued by how he goes about working out new scams, and exhausted by all the energy he puts into them. Seriously.

I've decided that I'm far too mentally lazy to be a scam artist. Hell. I'm just too lazy, period. Turns out, I'd rather just work for a living.

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