Two days in a RO!

If you have visited my blog for awhile, you have seen some of the gifts my friend RO has sent me.  Imagine my surprise when right after I sent her some washi tape and before there was any chance she could have received it, I received the card on the right and the leaves.

The very next day Bleubeard and I received this beautiful Breast Cancer Awareness scarf and the Halloween card.

I have never seen a two ounce postage stamp before, so I suspect it will find its way into my art at some point.  Although I don't have a blinky like how RO thanked me, I am no less grateful.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear sweet RO!

A week or so ago, my foodie friend Sally asked me to go with her to see Frank Abagnale.  Some of you may have seen the story that was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.  Although the film loosely follows Abagnale's life, it takes certain liberties that Abignale explained. 

When Frank Jr. was 15, he was brought to court and told he had to choose between living with either his mother or his father.  He chose to live with his father, who often let him tag along on business calls.  That's when he learned about white collar dealings.

His father set him up with a checking account when he was still 15.  He began working a gas card scheme, in which he used his father's card.  When his dad got the bill, he of course, couldn't pay it.  His mother intervened and sent Frank Jr. to a school for wayward children.  It didn't take him long until he found a way to leave there.  By 16, he was on his own.

Because he was so tall, he altered his driver's license that showed him to be 26, rather than 16.  He thought he could get better jobs that way.  He still barely made ends meet, so he quit working and started writing checks to support himself.  Although his bank account was now empty, he still wrote hundreds of checks on that account, anyway.

He thought if he could command better respect, he could cash more checks.  That's when decided to impersonate a pilot and schemed his way into getting a pilot's uniform. He called Pan American Airlines' headquarters and told them that he had lost his uniform while traveling. Pan Am told him where to pick up a new one, which he did, then charged it to the company using a fake employee I.D.

Next, he pretended to be a high school student doing a report on Pan Am pilots.  From this information, he made his own fake F.A.A. license and pilot's I.D..  He would hitch rides all over the world pretending to be a pilot getting back home or to his next destination (known as deadheading).  He also got to stay at hotels and get free food because of his pilot status.  He told us he never flew on Pan Am because someone might recognize him or see through his lies.

After traveling over a million miles through 26 countries, Pan Am finally got wise.  That's when he disappeared and went to Georgia, where he impersonated a doctor.

He also had as many as eight different "professions" before he was 21.  When he finally decided to settle in France, he was 21 and wanted to live a straight life.  However, a former girlfriend saw his wanted poster and turned him in to the French police.  He served six months in a French prison, six months in a Swedish prison, then was sent to the U.S. to serve 10 years.  However, after serving four years, the FBI invited him to work in their fraud unit, where he still works to this day.  Unlike the movie, once he left home at 16, he never saw his father again.

He then gave us tips on how we can be safer with our lives and our choices.  One thing he suggested was, we should be very, very careful about what we share on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter.  He told us to never use our real name or addresses (I seem to be bad about my address, since you can see the house number when I show the front of my house and I often advertise the city and state I live in) unless we were big names in our profession.  He thought selfies could be the biggest threat in the future because good hackers have facial recognition software that can be used to create debit and credit cards and other cards that require a facial I.D..  He also talked about phone and other scams and how to avoid them.  It was a fascinating speech and if you get a chance to read his story AND his tips of being safe (especially on the internet), visit his web site that I highlighted above.

Thanks for joining me today and thanks for reading through to the end of this fascinating man's story.  And thanks to RO, too.