When I was passing phony checks in other people’s names thirty years ago, it took me weeks and a million-dollar Heidelberg printing press to create and cash a realistic-looking check. Today criminals do it in an instant on a $500 computer, with no witnesses to pick them out of a lineup, because they’re doing it from an armchair in China, Russia, or Nigeria, a continent away. In recent years identity theft has become the very monster I feared it would become and wrote about in the l980s.
FRANK W. ABAGNALE is the author of the bestselling memoir Catch Me If You Can and The Art of the Steal. He works closely with the FBI and corporations around the world as an expert on counterfeiting and secure documents. He lives in the Midwest with his wife and is the father of three sons.
