Catch Me If You Can (15 page)

I did get to Phoenix, but I made no effort to contact her. If I had, it wouldn’t have been to collect but to pay off, for Pixie let me into the mint.

The next day I sought out a stationery printing supply firm. “I’m thinking of starting a little stationery store and job printing shop,” I told a salesman.

“I’ve been advised that an I-Tek camera and a small offset press would probably meet my initial needs, and that good used equipment might prove just as feasible from an economic standpoint.”

The salesman nodded. “That’s true,” he agreed. “Trouble is, used I-Tek cameras are hard to come by. We don’t have one. We do have a fine little offset press that’s seen very limited service, and I’ll make you a good deal on the press if you take it along with a new I-Tek. Let you have both for $8,000.”

I was somewhat surprised by the price, but after he showed me the machines and demonstrated the operating procedure of both, I felt $8,000 was a paltry sum to invest in such gems. An I-Tek camera is simply a photoelectric engraver. It photographically produces an engraving of the original copy to be reproduced. The lightweight, flexible plate is then wrapped around the cylinder of an offset press, and the plate prints directly on the blanket of the press, which in turn offsets the image onto whatever paper stock is used. As Pixie said, anybody could do it with a little training, and I acquired my training on the spot.

The I-Tek camera and the small press, while not overly heavy, were large and bulky, not objects to be carted around the country as part of one’s luggage. But I planned only a limited ownership of the machines.

I located a warehouse storage firm and rented a well-lighted cubicle for a month, paying in advance. I then obtained a cashier’s check for $8,000 and bought the I-Tek camera and the press and had them delivered to the storage room. The same day I made a round of stationery stores and purchased all the supplies I needed-a drawing board, pens and pencils, rulers, a paper cutter, press-on letters and numerals, a quantity of safety paper in both blue and green card stock of the type used for the real expense checks and other items.

The next day I closeted myself in my makeshift workshop and, using the various materials, created a 16-by-24-inch facsimile of the sham Pan Am expense check I’d been reproducing by hand. Finished, I positioned my artwork under the camera, set the reduction scale for a
2›V2-by-7V2-
inch engraving and pushed the button. Within minutes I was fitting the plate around the drum of the press and printing sample copies of my invention.

I was astonished and delighted. The camera reduction had taken away any infractions and discrepancies in lines and lettering as far as the naked eye could discern. Using the paper cutter, I sliced one from the card stock and examined it. Save for the four smooth edges, I might have been holding a genuine check!

I ran off five hundred of the counterfeit checks before shutting down the little press and abandoning both it and the I-Tek camera. I went back to my hotel room, donned my pilot’s uniform, stuck a packet of the checks in my coat and went out to buck the tiger.

The tiger, for me, was a pussy cat. I ironed out Vegas like a bed sheet. That afternoon and night, and the following day, I hit nearly a hundred casinos, bars, hotels, motels, night clubs and other gambling spots, and in Vegas almost any place you walk into offers some kind of action. There’re slot machines in the grocery stores. No cashier showed the slightest hesitation about cashing one of my phony checks. “Would you cash this and give me $50 in chips?” I’d ask, and promptly I’d be handed $50 in markers and the balance in cash. For appearance’s sake, I’d usually stay in a casino for twenty or thirty minutes, playing the tables, before hitting the next place, and much to my amusement I whacked out the casinos that way too.

I came out $300 ahead playing the slots. I won $1,600 playing blackjack. Without the slightest inkling of the game, I picked up $900 playing roulette, and I won $2,100 at the dice tables. In all, I murdered Vegas for $39,000! I left Nevada driving a rented Cadillac, although I had to put up a $1,000 deposit when I told the lessor I’d probably be using the car several weeks.

I had it for nearly three months, as a matter of fact. I made a leisurely, meandering tour of the Northwest and Midwest, maintaining the pose of an airline pilot on vacation and alternating in the role of Frank Williams and Frank Adams. Since I didn’t want to leave the hounds a trail that could be too easily followed, I didn’t exactly scatter my counterfeits like confetti but I did stop to make a score now and then. I picked up $5,000 in Salt Lake City, $2,000 in Billings, $4,000 in Cheyenne and I bilked Kansas City banks for $18,000 before ending up in Chicago, where I simply parked the Cadillac and walked away.

I decided to hole up in Chicago for a while and give some serious thought to the future, or at least where I wanted to spend a great deal of the future. I was again entertaining the idea of fleeing the country. I wasn’t too concerned about my immediate security, but I knew that if I continued to operate in the U.S. it would be only a matter of time before I was nabbed. The principal problem I faced in trying to leave the country, of course, was obtaining a passport. I couldn’t apply for one in my own name since blabbing to Rosalie, and by now the authorities must have linked Frank Williams and Frank Adams to Frank Abagnale, Jr. I mulled the situation as I went about settling in Chicago, but as things turned out I didn’t have too much time for mulling.

I leased a nice apartment on Lakeshore Drive, using the name Frank Williams. I did so primarily because I was out of personalized checks and I always liked to have a supply in my possession. A lot of motels, I had learned, would not cash a company check but would accept a personal check in the amount of the bill or in cash amounts up to $100. I had forsaken personal checks as a means of swindling, but I still used them as a means of paying room rent when necessary. I didn’t like to lay out hard cash when I could slide one of my soft checks.

Accordingly, I dropped into a bank a week after alighting in Chicago and opened a checking account for $500. I identified myself as a Pan Am pilot, and gave as my address for the checks that of a mail service firm in New York to which I’d recently subscribed as another means of covering my trail. “But I want my checks and my monthly statements mailed to this address,” I instructed the bank officer who handled the transaction, giving him my Lake-shore Drive address.

“You see, the reason I want an account here is because I’m in and out of Chicago all the time on company business and it’s much more convenient to have an account in a local bank.”

The bank officer agreed. “You’ll receive your regular checks in about a week, Mr. Williams. In the meantime, here’re some temporary checks you can use,” he said.

Observation. A great asset for a con man, I’ve said. I had observed a very lovely teller when I entered the bank. Her image remained in my mind after I left the bank, and when she persisted in my thoughts over the next few days I determined to meet her. I returned to the bank several days later on the pretext of making a deposit and was filling out a deposit slip I had taken from a counter in the middle of the lobby when an even higher power of observation took command of my mind.

In the lower left-hand corner of the deposit slip was a rectangular box for the depositor’s account number. I never filled in the box, for I knew it wasn’t required. When a teller put a deposit slip in the small machine in his or her cage, in order to furnish you with a stamped receipt, the machine was programed to read the account number first. If the number was there, the amount of the deposit was automatically credited to the account holder. But if the number wasn’t there, the account could still be credited using the name and address, so the number wasn’t necessary.

There was a fellow beside me filling out a deposit slip. I noticed he neglected to give his account number. I dawdled in the bank for nearly an hour and watched those who came in to deposit cash, checks or credit-card vouchers. Not one in twenty, if that many, used the space provided for his or her account number.

I forgot about the girl. I surreptitiously pocketed a sheaf of the deposit slips, returned to my apartment and, using press-on numerals matching the type face on the bank forms, filled in the blank on each slip with my own account number.

The following morning, I returned to the bank and just as stealthily put the sheaf of deposit slips back in a slot atop a stack of others. I didn’t know if my ploy would succeed or not, but it was worth a risk. Four days later I returned to the bank and made a $250 deposit. “By the way, what’s my balance, please?” I asked the teller. “I forgot to enter some checks I wrote this week.”

The teller obligingly called bookkeeping. “Your balance, including this deposit, is $42,876.45, Mr. Williams,” she said.

Just before the bank closed, I returned and drew out $40,000 in a cashier’s check, explaining I was buying a home. I didn’t buy a home, of course, but I sure did feather my nest. The next morning I cashed the check at another bank and that afternoon flew to Honolulu, where a pretty Hawaiian girl greeted me with a kiss and put a lei around my neck.

I was a cad when it came to reciprocating. During the next two weeks I fashioned a $38,000 lei of fraudulent checks, spent three days hanging it around the necks of banks and hotels on the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai, and then jetted to New York.

It was the first time I’d been back in New York since hitting the paperhanger’s trail, and I was tempted to call Mom and Dad and maybe even see them. I decided against any such action, however, as much from shame as anything else. I might return home a financial success beyond either Mom’s or Dad’s comprehension, but mine was not the kind of success either of them would appreciate or condone.

I stayed in New York just long enough to devise a new scam. I opened a checking account in one of the Chase Manhattan branches, and when I received my personalized checks, in the name of Frank Adams, with the address of an East Side flat I’d rented, I flew to Philadelphia and scouted the city’s banks. I selected one with an all-glass front, enabling prospective depositors to see all the action inside and providing the bank officers, whose desks lined the glass wall, with a* good view of the cash inflow.

I wanted them to have a very pleasant view of me, so I arrived the next morning in a Rolls-Royce driven by a chauffeur I had hired for the occasion.

As the chauffeur opened the door for me, I saw one of the bank officers had indeed noticed my arrival. When I entered the bank, I walked directly to him. I had dressed befitting a man with a chauffeured Rolls-Royce-custom-tailored three-piece suit in pearl gray, a $100 homburg and alligator Ballys-and the look in his eyes told me the young banker recognized my grooming as another indication of wealth and power.

“Good morning,” I said briskly, taking a seat in front of his desk. “My name is Frank Adams, Adams Construction Company of New York. We’ll be doing three construction projects here during the year and I want to transfer some funds here from my New York bank. I want to open a checking account with you people.”

“Yes, sir!” he replied enthusiastically, reaching for some forms. “Will you be transferring all your funds here, Mr. Adams?”

“As far as my personal funds are concerned, yes,” I said. “I’m not sure about the company funds as yet, and won’t be until I look closer at the projects, but in any event we’ll want to place a substantial amount here.”

“Well, for your personal account, Mr. Adams, all you have to do is write me a check for the remaining balance in your New York bank and that will close that account out.”

“Is that all?” I said, feigning surprise. “I didn’t realize it was that simple.” I took my checkbook from my inside pocket and, holding it so he couldn’t see it, ran my finger down an imaginary column of figures, murmuring. Then I looked up at him. “May I use your adding machine, please? I wrote some checks yesterday and didn’t balance my checkbook and I’m not much on adding figures in my head.”

“Certainly,” he said and turned the machine for my use. I ran a few figures and then nodded.

“Well, I make my balance $17,876.28, and I’m sure that’s correct,” I said. “But let’s just open an account for $17,000. I’ll be going back to New York on occasion and I’d like to maintain a small balance there.”

I wrote him a check for $17,000 and gave him the necessary information for setting up an account. I gave my address as the hotel where I had registered. “I’ll be staying there until I can find a suitable apartment or house to lease,” I said.

The young banker nodded. “You realize, of course, Mr. Adams, you can’t write any checks on your account until your check has cleared in New York,” he said. “That shouldn’t take over four or five days, however, and in the meantime if you run short of funds, come to me and I’ll take care of it. Here are some temporary checks for such an event.”

I shook my head. “That’s kind of you, but I anticipated the delay,” I said. “I have ample funds for my needs.”

I shook hands with him and left. That night I flew to Miami and the following afternoon I appeared in front of another glass-fronted bank, again in a Rolls-Royce but at the wheel myself, and casually but again expensively attired. I glanced at my watch as I entered the lobby. The Philadelphia bank would be open for another thirty minutes. A strikingly handsome and chicly dressed woman who had noted my arrival greeted me as I stepped into the lobby.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked, smiling. On closer inspection she was much older than I had first thought, but she was still an alluring woman.

“I hope so,” I said, returning the smile. “But I think I’d better speak to the bank manager.”

Her eyes lit impishly. “I am the bank manager,” she said, laughing. “Now, what’s your problem? You certainly don’t appear to need a loan.”

I threw up my hands in mock defeat. “No, no, nothing like that,” I said. “My name’s Frank Adams and I’m from Philadelphia and I’ve been looking around Miami for years for a suitable vacation home. Well, today I found a fantastic deal, a floating house near Biscayne Bay, but the man wants cash and he wants a $15,000 deposit by five o’clock today. He won’t take a personal check and I don’t have a bank account here.