79 pages • 2 hours read
Frank Abagnale, Stan ReddingCatch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “How to Tour Europe on a Felony a Day”
Abagnale goes to Mexico with assets of $500,000 and continues to spread his fake checks. He meets a Pan Am stewardess who bemoans that she forgot to cash her check on the way to a weekend in Acapulco. Abagnale offers to cash the authentic Pan Am check, but stows it away for future reference. He procures a temporary passport under another name by connecting with an expat writer on Mexican affairs who enjoys doing favors for Americans. From there, he flies to London, then France, musing that he’s now “riding a merry-go-round” (162) and is incapable of sound judgment, and acting on impulse.
At a Windsor Hotel party in Paris, he meets Monique Lavalier, a stewardess for Air France. They date, and she introduces him to her father, who is a printer. Abagnale offers Pan Am’s him business and her father eagerly accepts, naively printing thousands of Pan Am check duplicates.
Abagnale moves about New York and Boston. Waiting at the Boston airport, he notices many people stopping at the night depository of a large Boston bank, dropping receipts into a steel-faced receptacle. A pair of Massachusetts state troopers sees Abagnale and takes him to jail for vagrancy because they have no other concrete reason to jail him.
At the jail, Abagnale is greeted by a bail bondsman. Abagnale tells an elaborate story about how he was going to deadhead to Miami to see a girl. The bondsman lets Abagnale out and drives him to the airport. Abagnale pays him with a fake check. FBI agent O’Riley later mocks the bondsman, saying the check isn’t real and it serves him right.
From a nearby hotel, Abagnale calls the Boston bank’s airport branch and asks for security. He claims to be a new guard whose uniform was ripped in an accident. He is directed to a store for a replacement. That night, he arrives in his guard ensemble and stands outside the bank deposit box by a sign that directs people to make deposits with the guard. He leaves with a bag filled with $62,800.
The next day, Abagnale flies to Istanbul. On a layover in Tel Aviv, he stops at a bank and sends a $5000 cashier’s check to the bail bondsman.
Chapter 8 Summary: “A Small Crew Will Do—It’s Just a Paper Airplane”
After encountering suspicion as a pilot traveling alone, Abagnale decides to assemble a fake flight crew. He calls Pan Am’s personnel office claiming to be the placement director of a small college, hoping to coordinate with the recruiting team. Pan Am’s personnel director says they can’t help him, but they’ll have a team at the University of Arizona during the last two weeks of October. Abagnale has Pan Am brochures mailed to him on behalf of his non-existent college. He then writes a letter to the University of Arizona director saying he represents a new Pan Am program wherein pilots train stewardesses. He provides three dates for on-campus interviews in September, signs using the name of Pan Am’s personnel director, and sends the Pan Am brochures to distribute to students.
Abagnale goes to Miami Beach for some quick money, posing as a stockbroker. At a hotel party, he meets Cheryl, a woman Frank finds beautiful, and who turns out to be a sex worker. Internally indignant about the idea of paying for sex, Abagnale offers her $1000, gives her a fake check for $1400, and persuades her to give him $400 in cash.
At the University of Arizona, Abagnale meets with thirty applicants, claiming he represents a PR firm taking promotional photos for Pan Am and does not have the final say in whether they are hired as real stewardesses. In his evaluation process, he favors candidates who seem unlikely to panic in the event that his scam is revealed. He instructs his chosen faux stewardesses to send one-inch square photos to him, so he can make fake airline IDs. Abagnale also asks for measurements for uniforms. When the uniforms are ready, he sends each girl a letter of acceptance, with directions to assemble at a Los Angeles airport.
At the airport, he passes out IDs and uniforms and outlines their travel itinerary: London, Paris, Rome, Athens, Geneva, Munich, Berlin, Madrid, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Vienna. He frequently repeats the most important rule of his crew: they must answer as few questions about their actual status as possible. He pays each crew member every two weeks with fake company checks the stewardesses endorse and Abagnale then cashes. They also endorse exorbitant faux Pan Am company expense bills. The girls enjoy the European tour and seem to have no inkling of the scam. When the tour ends and the girls fly back to Arizona, Abagnale has netted $300,000.
Abagnale wanders Europe for several weeks, feeling restless and anxious. He feels equally restless when he returns to the United States. He decides to seek safe haven in Montpellier, France.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
Abagnale continues to demonstrate complicated ethics in these chapters. On the one hand, he prides himself in being a man of his word, wiring $5000 to the bail bondsman who helped him. On the other hand, he deliberately breaks his own “code of ethics” by cheating Cheryl out of $400. Though his reasons for cheating Cheryl are subjective, the reader can safely assess that they arise from indignation about paying for sex when he learns she is a sex worker (and implied indignation about being conned by a woman). This incident also invites the reader to closely consider his “code of ethics” stipulation that he normally doesn’t con individuals. While it may be true that Abagnale typically avoids cheating individuals out of money, this statement raises questions of less tangible ways he might have cheated the women he’s dated: with dishonesty, with false pretenses, with swift and unexpected ends to relationships. It is also worth noting that Abagnale directly profits from information his dates share with him, though he does not directly share those profits.
The faux Pan Am stewardess crew provides an ideal case study for Abagnale’s questionable ethics. Abagnale posits that in return for the $300,000 he earned in scam checks and fake company expenses, he provides the young women with modest salaries and an enjoyable summer excursion. He also makes a point of telling the young women that it is not in his power to offer them a job or guarantee that they will be contacted by Pan Am. This perspective takes for granted, however, that Abagnale’s scam generates the expectation and hope of a job. It also takes for granted that some of the women might not appreciate that they are aiding and abetting a criminal operation.
