Identity theft 'Frank Abagnale' (Essay Sample)

Identity theft "Frank Abagnale"
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Introduction
Identity fraud is taken to be the actual deception of use of identity information of other people. These people may be living or dead and are connected to a series of fraud. These cases normally are inclusive of personating people and misuse of data from debit or credit cards (Finklea, 2009). Theft of identity techniques vary from one person to another and may be complicated or simple. The striking factor is that the fraud activities utilize the internet as the main criminal mode and trend to design acquisition of personal information of these individuals. It is imperative to note that identity theft caves in for creation of havoc and assumption of identity of people for instance the drivers and doctors and lawyers or other important and professional people in the society. The information normally sought is personal that includes the name, dates of birth and password information of things like credit cards. The identity thieves calculate their moves in a way that is convincing and in fact, nobody can question their art of gathering information.
One such convictive identity thief was frank Abagnale (Mercuri, 2006). This was one of the security consultants who emerged notorious through the forgery of checks for a period of almost five years starting at the age of sixteen years old. He perpetrated this crime for a long period causing havoc to over twenty five countries. It is in the process of forgery that he assumed almost might identities for which he used before he was twenty one years of age.
Financial implication of Abagnale’s activities
Being born in the family of four and spending his first years in New York was one of the reasons as to why Frank sought to begin this line of crime (Kirsche, 2005). Dating back his years, his father happened to be his first victim. The father gave him a credit card to purchase gas as well as a truck that would act as an aid to his part time job that he had got. Frank came up with a plan for which he would be in a position to treat the women of his life by using the credit card. He would use the card to buy parts of cars that he would entrust the attendants to keep them in exchange of money. The father would however, result to paying up bills that were as a result of this activity of crime.
Moving further, this confidence that he would become a good fraud personality led him to go ahead and try to fake checks on his account. The bank would accept this for just a short while after which he would have to pay the money back (Sanchez, 2012). He therefore, moved on to open other accounts using various banks and making other identities so as to keep up the fake checks. One of his famous ways to fraud was printing his account number on a blank deposit slip after which he added the slips to the bunch of other real slips in the bank. The deposits by the other customers thus went to his account rather than the intended accounts of the customers targeted.
Impersonations used
Commencing from his crime in the banks, Abagnale participated in various impersonifications so as to accomplish his intents. One time he decided to impersonate a pilot. This is since he wished to fly across the globe without paying for it. In this case, he got a uniform through making a call to the uniform authority of the airports and declared he was a pilot who worked for the airline and got one using the fake employee identity card he had (Feldman, 2003). Successfully he also forged a pilot’s license. Without any flying experience, he would even be entrusted by other pilots to take control of various airplanes during his flights. During this time he would fly for free and stay in expensive hotels all on the airline’s budget.
This, he did and managed to fly over about twenty six countries due to his convictive ability as a person. Financially, this met that the company he impersonated would suffer the loss of expenses of utilities he used hence losses. Again, he forged a degree from Columbia University and managed to teach at Brigham University for almost a semester as a teaching assistant (Finklea, 2009).
As an impersonated doctor, he forged his identity as a resident doctor for the children in a hospital in Georgia. This he did after he was almost arrested when he was flying for free in New Orleans. In this escapade he met a doctor who became his friend and got a job as a supervisor for the interns in the hospital as a volunteer before the hospital could get someone to replace him. One day however, when there was a case of an infant who had lacked oxygen, he panicked since he had no idea of the meaning of that situation (Akst, 2007). He realized how risky this was and went back flying. This incident meant that people would pay for services for someone who was not qualified thus losses of financial value.
As if that was not enough, his havoc mission ended up posing as an attorney. He managed to make a fake Harvard transcript for law for which he used to get a job at Louisiana attorney general’s office. He did this at the age of nineteen. He tried passing the bar exams for three times and was in fact, accepted as an attorney in the office after which he resigned when a colleague of his seemed to probe his tenure at Harvard and he feared he could get caught. Financially this meant that the office would pay him for work he was not qualified to do.
Imprisonment
Abagnale managed to live in fraud until the year 1969 when he was unfortunately caught. This was in France when he was still flying and served jail time in France (Rebovich, 2009). His fraud charges in Sweden were particularly interesting since his lawyer claimed that the checks he had been caught with were ones he had created and not forged hence a motion to dismiss his case. His deportation to the United States enabled his sentence for 12 years in prison for various incidences of forgery. This would mean that he would repay the money that the institutions and people he had stolen from. However,, through his tactics he allegedly escaped.
Credible jobs
Throughout his havoc and criminal identity theft, he was later released and in fact, tried working on jobs for instance being a cook and grocer. However, this could not work out since he had a poor criminal record of fraud. Instead he resigned from these jobs and began an associate company that offers caution to businesses towards cases of fraud. He was also presented a profession by the federal bureau as an advisor of fraud cases. He has worked there for almost thirty years for which he has created fraud mitigation programs that are taken to be vital during the curbing of crimes around the nation.
Frank sets out as one of the highly renowned authorities in forgery and causing of havoc by theft of identity and impersonation. His work is now historically respected as foundation for which he now consults for the most extreme of crimes and expertise on blends of conning and forgery. In the world he is respected for confidence in crime and his apprehension of evading the authorities during his years of prison and foreign encounters (Mercuri, 2006). According to him, theft of identity is a crime that is limited to the imagination of the criminal. Criminals conducting identity theft can go undetected nowadays especially because of technology within the nation.
According to Abagnale, criminals get data of individuals especially the name, security number and date of birth and then go forth to create a credit card. The criminals normally alter like just a letter of the name of the security number since the credit cards have the option of human error when making applications. This goes on by issuance of new credit cards with the names of stolen identities and the criminals use these cards as a basis for monetary gains for instance loan applications.
Conclusion
The sighting of Abagnale of the examples of crime avenues that are used to take away personal information is an eye opener for which people should be alert especially due to the technology that is within the globe nowadays. In many cases, personal information is let out by people who are not hackers necessarily but post cards that have the names and birth dates of people without the...