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Frank Abagnale on the death of the con artist and the rise of cybercrime
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoObligatory link [0] to his amazing talk at Google a while back. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI
- slumdev 7y agoHe's delivered that talk at many different companies. I had the opportunity to see it last year. I was surprised at how consistent his word choice and cadence were between the two instances of the talk.
- agumonkey 7y agoSomehow I am not surprised by him liking precision
- dredmorbius 7y agoVery common in public speakers. YouTube often offers the opportunity to catch different stops on speaking tours. Talking heads in multiple TV soundbites, or candidates in stump speeches as well.
- pottertheotter 7y agoIt's the same with podcasts when someone comes out with a new book.
- cpuguy83 7y agoA good presentation is rarely unrehearsed.
- extempore 7y agoPatch Me If You Can
- pupppet 7y ago>What I did was almost 50 years ago and it's about 4,000 times easier today to con people than when I did it. To forge a cheque 50 years ago, you needed... The thing is back in the day, if you put in the work, your con was all but guaranteed. I don't think you can make that same claim today.
- codegeek 7y agoYea exactly. Nowadays with so many things being digital, some things are harder to con. For example, a check can now be verified within minutes through digital machines. Frank wouldn't have to worry about that 50 years ago. Con men/women are everywhere in every era. They just change their mediums and methods according to the times.
- krawakoliz 7y agoThere are about 1000x the cons to run now, though, most of them using the identifiable information that is already on the internet. Just look at the conflation of some combination of birthday and ssn as “proof” of id in spite of millions of employees having easy access to the information. Christ, for some reason Comcast has my ssn despite having zero legitimate use for it. Add automated phishing and you have a cash printer.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 7y agoSure you can. Checks were harder to get rid of 50 years ago. On the street we have a legit smalltime money-laundering industry in terms of retail gift card availability. A real common racket these days is targeting immigrant business people pretending to be the utility company/IRS/etc and demand gift cards to settle some matter, for example. There is a huge underground economy out there. Off the street, the complete lack of security controls around ACH is an even more extreme risk. Just rob a mailbox and steal account info from checks.
- joering2 7y agoIt shocked me that Bank of America would deliver box of checks that were just dumped on my porch. I found them 3 days after I got email they were delivered in the bush next to front door. I remember years ago I had to be present home and DHL came and required ID/signature to receive those. That was 2014. In 2020 I guess they saving extra money. Fun fact - there is over $8MM in the corp account that these checks could cover.
- ChrisArchitect 7y agoplease add (2017)!
- appleiigs 7y agoAt the bottom of the article, it says a reprint from 2013!
- heavymark 7y agoI literally just watched Catch Me if You Can last night. Haven't in a while. Have noticed before where I just watched or did something and the next day see a news feed item aligning with that. Is it just a coincidence? Something like this seems just too much to be a coincidence. Some how ad targeting? Though I watched through AppleTV, can't remember if through HBO, Amazon Disney+ or Netflix as I use all the apps all the time interchangeable. Ad targeting would seem most likely but unlike when viewing in a browser where I'd expect to be target seems odd when the interaction wasn't in a browser. Or I suppose it could be that these articles are appearing coincidentally, and just having watching/done something very recently my mind recognizes much more than it would otherwise?
- heavymark 7y agoOr another maybe more likely option I guess is that I watched it because it was being featured on one of the app platforms, and then news feed apps/sites know what has been featured and that a lot of people are probably watching a certain show and thus write an article or share an old article that will be top of mind for people. I guess that may be most likely in this particular case.
- yodon 7y agoIt's unclear if the parent comment is sarcasm or a real comment. Hacker News is certainly not feeding articles to you based on what movies you watched last night.
- akhilcacharya 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Fre...
- FPGAhacker 7y agoSee https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/baader-meinhof-phenomenon.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...
- stevula 7y agoBaader–Meinhof phenomenon
- jml7c5 7y agoWhere have people landed with regards to Frank Abagnale and the veracity of his past exploits? I know there's a section on his Wikipedia page about it[1], but I don't know if there have been any recent corroborations that cleared things up. (On a personal note: I was quite let down to discover some of the stories were — at the least — exaggerated. Though if it turns out it's all fake, it would be an entertaining story on its own: a con man who cons people into believing he was a con man!) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale#Veracity_of_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale#Veracity_of_cla...
- rapind 7y agoThere's a Google talk that he did I found fascinating (on YouTube). Didn't seem to toot his own horn much (long con?!?).
- LunaSea 7y agoIf he did a Google Talk ... that's kind of already tooting his own horn
- adventured 7y agoKind of. Once you've had a blockbuster movie released based on your exploits, starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, I don't think a Google Talk goes very far on the horn tooting scale.
- caseysoftware 7y agoNo, watch the talk. He doesn't toot his own horn at all. He was the closing keynote at our annual conference (Okta's Oktane) last year and it was the same way. He was open and clear about what he did, how much he regretted it, and why he did it. Fundamentally, it came down that he was young (16), scared (parents getting a divorce), and stupid. He reacted out of fear and total disregard for other people. He also talked about coming through the other side and learning what mattered and why. I sat down in his keynote as a fan of his exploits and finished as a fan of the man himself. Watch the Google talk.
- cromwellian 7y agoThere’s literally thousands of Indian call center scammers that are fleecing people of money purely be convincing them that they’re fixing their computer when they’re doing nothing or that they’re due a refund but got too much money and need to pay some back. Or there’s the IRS scammers who call you and tell you that you owe taxes. Most of these involve really pathetic attempts at impersonation and the only reason people fall for it is ignorance. So con artists are by no means dead and YouTube is full of channels where con artists con the scammers. IRLRosie and Kitboga in particular are hilarious.
- cromwellian 7y agoAlso I’d argue that GOOP and Gwyneth Paltrow are running a kind of confidence scheme.
- catalogia 7y agoThere are also "multi-level marketting" pyramid schemes and high pressure timeshare salesmen still out there. The difference between an outright conman and a high-pressure salesman seems marginal at best.
- claudeganon 7y agoFun fact: the second largest industry in Utah (after tourism) are pyramid schemes. They do billions in revenue. It’s also the center of the entirely unregulated bogus, vitamin/supplement industry. So not only are conmen alive and well, they’re a primary industry in at least one US state.
- Nextgrid 7y agoIt is insane that an entire state is actually happy to be a save haven for this trash instead of cracking down on it. It isn't like they don't know either, there are more than enough stories out there on the dangers and negative effects of MLMs (both financial but also health-wise since the MLM paddlers will often make bogus health claims related to the scams they're hawking) for anyone in power to know these are bad and should be regulated out of existence.
- binichgross 7y agoA very "OK Boomer" article.
- Uhhrrr 7y ago> Today you can call any corporation in the world and tell them you are getting ready to wire them money and they will tell you the bank, the wiring number, the account number. You can then ask for a copy of the annual report and on page three are the signatures of the chairman of the board, the CEO and the treasurer. It's all on white glossy paper with black ink – scanner ready art. You then just print it onto the cheque. Banks know about websites and printers so there's no way this would work... er, right?
- WalterBright 7y agoMy bank cashed a check against my account where: 1. the payer name was not mine 2. the payer address was not mine (and was in another state) 3. the signature was that of another person 4. the checks were not issued by my bank Jeez.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoThat sounds like it’s worth reporting to the news!
- WalterBright 7y agoThe bank later tried to sell me blank checks on their extra cost "security" paper. I laughed.
- Merrill 7y agoIn the normal course of check processing, a device reads the MICR line of characters at the bottom of the check and the amount. The name, address, signature and other features are usually not processed unless the amount is high, the account has specific services, or some other indicator is tripped.
- WalterBright 7y agoThese days there's no excuse for not OCR'ing the payer name and address.
- cafard 7y agoEvery couple of months the Washington Post covers the arrest of conviction of somebody who has been swindling people out of houses or many, practicing law without a license, etc. They may not have the style of Frank Abagnale, but they are far from extinct.