Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

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.