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Stealing Your Life
Brimming with anecdotes of creative criminality that are as entertaining as they are enlightening, Stealing Your Life is the practical way to shield yourself from one of today's most nefarious and common crimes.
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First published May 1, 2007
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About the author
Frank W. Abagnale
20 books290 followersBorn and raised in the Westchester County city of Bronxville, New York, Abagnale attended Iona Preparatory School, an all boys Catholic high school which is run by the Irish Christian Brothers. He was the third of four children (two brothers and one sister) born to a French mother, Paula Abagnale, and an American father, Frank William Abagnale, Sr.
One of the early signs of his future as a fraudster came when, after purchasing a car, he persuaded his father to lend him his Mobil card. With this card, he would purchase large quantities of car parts, such as tires, batteries, engines and fuel. The purchases were on paper only, the goods were never taken from the shelves. In an agreement with the gas station attendant, he would then immediately return the items for cash for less than the price at which they were purchased, the remainder being pocketed by the attendant. Not realizing that the card was in his father's name, he tricked his dad out of $3400, doing this to pay for dates, before the local Mobil branch sought his father out for questioning and expecting payment. Upon being confronted, Abagnale confessed to his father that "it's the girls that make me crazy", but escaped punishment for the incident. Later, his mother placed him for four months in a special Catholic Charities school for juvenile offenders.
In 1964, when he was 16, his parents divorced. The experience was so traumatic that he ran away during a court break. It was the last time he saw his father, though he renewed contact with his mother after seven years.
Living alone in New York City after running away, he became known as the "Big Nale", later shortened to just "Big". He decided to exploit his mature appearance and alter his driver's license to make it appear that he was ten years older to get a job. However Abagnale, posing as a high school dropout in his mid-twenties, quickly learned the more education one has, the more one is paid. Desperate to survive, he soon began working as a confidence trickster to earn money.
He has since become the founder of a secure-document corporation based in Washington DC. He lectures regularly worldwide and lives in the Midwest with his wife and three sons.
One of the early signs of his future as a fraudster came when, after purchasing a car, he persuaded his father to lend him his Mobil card. With this card, he would purchase large quantities of car parts, such as tires, batteries, engines and fuel. The purchases were on paper only, the goods were never taken from the shelves. In an agreement with the gas station attendant, he would then immediately return the items for cash for less than the price at which they were purchased, the remainder being pocketed by the attendant. Not realizing that the card was in his father's name, he tricked his dad out of $3400, doing this to pay for dates, before the local Mobil branch sought his father out for questioning and expecting payment. Upon being confronted, Abagnale confessed to his father that "it's the girls that make me crazy", but escaped punishment for the incident. Later, his mother placed him for four months in a special Catholic Charities school for juvenile offenders.
In 1964, when he was 16, his parents divorced. The experience was so traumatic that he ran away during a court break. It was the last time he saw his father, though he renewed contact with his mother after seven years.
Living alone in New York City after running away, he became known as the "Big Nale", later shortened to just "Big". He decided to exploit his mature appearance and alter his driver's license to make it appear that he was ten years older to get a job. However Abagnale, posing as a high school dropout in his mid-twenties, quickly learned the more education one has, the more one is paid. Desperate to survive, he soon began working as a confidence trickster to earn money.
He has since become the founder of a secure-document corporation based in Washington DC. He lectures regularly worldwide and lives in the Midwest with his wife and three sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
January 9, 2015
While the earlier book, Catch me if you can, was a marvel of chicanery, deception and cleverness, this was a drag.
June 20, 2011
The first 2/5th of the book is example after example of random people who have been the victims of identity fraud interspersed with paragraphs of Frank trying to ramp up the fear and paranoia (ie. dull). Then there are a few chapters of genuinely useful information about getting and checking credit reports, how to make yourself less vunerable to ID fraud etc. However this is followed by another several chapters of examples of people who fell victim to ID fraud and how terrible it is blah, blah, blah.
I was considering giving the book 2 stars until in the closing chapter he writes
"The instinct to cheat runs deep indeed... I'm not happy about it, and we live in an uncommonly unethical society. We don't empathsize ethics the way we used to, and many people, especially young people, don't seem to appreciate the very essentials of right and wrong."
You hypocritical m#therfucker! You're the 'Catch Me If You Can' guy! You spent your entire time as 'a young person' cashing forged cheques, impersonating pilots, lawyers & doctors, escaping from gaols etc.!
F#ck Frank Abagnale and f#ck this book.
I was considering giving the book 2 stars until in the closing chapter he writes
"The instinct to cheat runs deep indeed... I'm not happy about it, and we live in an uncommonly unethical society. We don't empathsize ethics the way we used to, and many people, especially young people, don't seem to appreciate the very essentials of right and wrong."
You hypocritical m#therfucker! You're the 'Catch Me If You Can' guy! You spent your entire time as 'a young person' cashing forged cheques, impersonating pilots, lawyers & doctors, escaping from gaols etc.!
F#ck Frank Abagnale and f#ck this book.
Read
September 18, 2021I regularly teach agents at the FBI Academy, and one little demonstration I do is to ask one of my students for his address. Nothing more, not even his name. By the following morning I’m able to hand over to him twenty-two pieces of so-called “private” information about him, including his Social Security number, birth date, salary, current bank and account numbers, mother’s maiden name, children’s names, spouse’s name and Social Security number, and neighbors. I can even reveal who lives with him in his house but isn’t related to him. And I don’t even have to do something as dramatic as hack into a bank database. All this information is readily available from publicly accessible sources on the Internet.
Visit the website familysearch.org. I typed in the name of my late father, Frank William Abagnale, Sr. I pressed Enter. Within thirty seconds, up came my father’s date of birth, date of death, and Social Security number, as well as the last five cities he lived in prior to his death. Because I had searched for Abagnale, I was able to scroll down to more than two hundred Abagnales—aunts, uncles, cousins who had passed away.
Identity thieves love to pick up old newspapers and scour the obituaries, not as you and I do, to see if there’s someone we know, but to look for someone they’d like to become. They’ll read, “Robert L. Carter, president and chief executive of a multimillion-dollar corporation and founder of dotcom company XYZ, died yesterday on Interstate 71 while traveling eastbound”—blah, blah, blah—“survived by his wife and family.” A few months later they pull up the name on familysearch.org and retrieve his Social Security number. They apply for a credit card in his name. No credit card bureau in the world, let alone the United States, keeps track of deaths. So they get the credit card. Carter’s widow gets the bill.
DocuSearch.com. For more than a dozen years they’ve been selling Social Security numbers. That’s their business: forty-nine bucks. All I do is enter your name and address and pay the $49. What they’re doing, of course, is perfectly legal. There are no laws in the United States—federal, state, county, or city—that prohibit the sale of Social Security numbers.
While you’ve surfing the Web, try NetDetective.com or just NetDetective2000, and you’ll be routed to a company whose ad says it all: “We’ll tell you everything and anything about anybody”—for a fee. The fee is $150. What they’ll tell you is where you work, what your salary is, your date of birth, your Social Security number, who you’re married to, and who you’ve been married to. They’ll tell you whether you’ve had a DWI or DUI, if you’ve ever been arrested, where you went to elementary school, where you went to high school, and where you went to college—you name it. They claim that they do cheap background checks for $150. So if I were an identity thief, why would I go out and waste my time looking up this information when, for $150, I have it at my fingertips? What’s $150? I’m going to get a credit card in your name, probably with a $5,000 limit, so the $150 is simply the cost of doing business.
ZabaSearch.com. It’s a doozy of a website. This service is largely free, and it ought to be, since zaba is derived from the Greek word tzaba, which means “free.” Type in somebody’s name, and you can get all their addresses for the last decade, their phone numbers (even if they’re unlisted), date of birth, and more. All this is the least scary aspect of the site. The most astonishing thing about ZabaSearch is that up until recently it allowed you to actually see somebody’s home, courtesy of overhead satellite cameras. I’m talking about homes of movie stars, of politicians, of chief executives, of your mother, of you. Within moments the screen would fill with aerial footage of that house, shot by satellite cameras.
It takes a thief about eight seconds to memorize the face of a check, so even before she’s dated it, he’s finished. He has trained himself to focus on the last name in the upper left-hand corner, and only the last name (he’ll worry about the first name later), as well as the city. He’ll pick up on the bank’s logo but never the bank’s name or the street, city, or state that it’s in. He ignores the long routing and transit number, the nine digits in the bracket, and picks up only on the account number at the end of the bracket. And he glances at the check number. He goes outside and jots the information down on a piece of paper. He pulls out the check reorder coupon from Parade magazine and fills it out. Name and address he’d like on the check? He goes to the white pages and looks for that last name. Let’s say it’s Worthington. There it is, something like Sally W. Worthington, 127 East Lo-cust Avenue, Lexington, Kentucky. He writes it in. Name of your bank? He saw the U.S. Bank logo, so U.S. Bank. He turns to the American Bankers Association key routing directory on the Internet and looks up U.S. Bank’s key, and there’s the routing and transit number. He memorized the account number. He assumes that a bank as sophisticated as U.S. Bank is probably tracking check numbers by some sort of artificial intelligence program, so if the shopper was on 1056, he’s going to start with something like 1065. Style of check? Well, you have flags on your checks, so he’s going to order checks with flags. How many? Two hundred. Last question: if you’d like these checks sent to an address other than the address printed on the face of the checks, say so here. He writes down his P.O. box number. Ten days later he’s got two hundred of the woman’s checks. He can spend them and cash them as if he were she. If the woman has money in her account, he’s going to get it. If she doesn’t have money, no problem, she probably has overdraft protection, so he’s going to get it anyway.
Dumpster diving is perfectly legal. As long as you don’t venture onto private property, there’s no law against rooting through somebody’s garbage. In fact, the Supreme Court, in a 1988 ruling, confirmed this fact.
Visit the website familysearch.org. I typed in the name of my late father, Frank William Abagnale, Sr. I pressed Enter. Within thirty seconds, up came my father’s date of birth, date of death, and Social Security number, as well as the last five cities he lived in prior to his death. Because I had searched for Abagnale, I was able to scroll down to more than two hundred Abagnales—aunts, uncles, cousins who had passed away.
Identity thieves love to pick up old newspapers and scour the obituaries, not as you and I do, to see if there’s someone we know, but to look for someone they’d like to become. They’ll read, “Robert L. Carter, president and chief executive of a multimillion-dollar corporation and founder of dotcom company XYZ, died yesterday on Interstate 71 while traveling eastbound”—blah, blah, blah—“survived by his wife and family.” A few months later they pull up the name on familysearch.org and retrieve his Social Security number. They apply for a credit card in his name. No credit card bureau in the world, let alone the United States, keeps track of deaths. So they get the credit card. Carter’s widow gets the bill.
DocuSearch.com. For more than a dozen years they’ve been selling Social Security numbers. That’s their business: forty-nine bucks. All I do is enter your name and address and pay the $49. What they’re doing, of course, is perfectly legal. There are no laws in the United States—federal, state, county, or city—that prohibit the sale of Social Security numbers.
While you’ve surfing the Web, try NetDetective.com or just NetDetective2000, and you’ll be routed to a company whose ad says it all: “We’ll tell you everything and anything about anybody”—for a fee. The fee is $150. What they’ll tell you is where you work, what your salary is, your date of birth, your Social Security number, who you’re married to, and who you’ve been married to. They’ll tell you whether you’ve had a DWI or DUI, if you’ve ever been arrested, where you went to elementary school, where you went to high school, and where you went to college—you name it. They claim that they do cheap background checks for $150. So if I were an identity thief, why would I go out and waste my time looking up this information when, for $150, I have it at my fingertips? What’s $150? I’m going to get a credit card in your name, probably with a $5,000 limit, so the $150 is simply the cost of doing business.
ZabaSearch.com. It’s a doozy of a website. This service is largely free, and it ought to be, since zaba is derived from the Greek word tzaba, which means “free.” Type in somebody’s name, and you can get all their addresses for the last decade, their phone numbers (even if they’re unlisted), date of birth, and more. All this is the least scary aspect of the site. The most astonishing thing about ZabaSearch is that up until recently it allowed you to actually see somebody’s home, courtesy of overhead satellite cameras. I’m talking about homes of movie stars, of politicians, of chief executives, of your mother, of you. Within moments the screen would fill with aerial footage of that house, shot by satellite cameras.
It takes a thief about eight seconds to memorize the face of a check, so even before she’s dated it, he’s finished. He has trained himself to focus on the last name in the upper left-hand corner, and only the last name (he’ll worry about the first name later), as well as the city. He’ll pick up on the bank’s logo but never the bank’s name or the street, city, or state that it’s in. He ignores the long routing and transit number, the nine digits in the bracket, and picks up only on the account number at the end of the bracket. And he glances at the check number. He goes outside and jots the information down on a piece of paper. He pulls out the check reorder coupon from Parade magazine and fills it out. Name and address he’d like on the check? He goes to the white pages and looks for that last name. Let’s say it’s Worthington. There it is, something like Sally W. Worthington, 127 East Lo-cust Avenue, Lexington, Kentucky. He writes it in. Name of your bank? He saw the U.S. Bank logo, so U.S. Bank. He turns to the American Bankers Association key routing directory on the Internet and looks up U.S. Bank’s key, and there’s the routing and transit number. He memorized the account number. He assumes that a bank as sophisticated as U.S. Bank is probably tracking check numbers by some sort of artificial intelligence program, so if the shopper was on 1056, he’s going to start with something like 1065. Style of check? Well, you have flags on your checks, so he’s going to order checks with flags. How many? Two hundred. Last question: if you’d like these checks sent to an address other than the address printed on the face of the checks, say so here. He writes down his P.O. box number. Ten days later he’s got two hundred of the woman’s checks. He can spend them and cash them as if he were she. If the woman has money in her account, he’s going to get it. If she doesn’t have money, no problem, she probably has overdraft protection, so he’s going to get it anyway.
Dumpster diving is perfectly legal. As long as you don’t venture onto private property, there’s no law against rooting through somebody’s garbage. In fact, the Supreme Court, in a 1988 ruling, confirmed this fact.
April 9, 2025
Great book, but some of the information is outdated.
May 25, 2019
This is an outstanding book on the serious problem of personal identity theft. Abagnale gives twenty solid recommendations on how to minimize the threat. He says minimize because no one can completely stop active inventive uncooperative criminals from committing their crimes. Worse yet are terrorists, assassins, and even “deep state” actors bent on getting at you. He mentions long term effects including the insidious consequences of your identity thief racking up a criminal record that is forever attached to your name. Don’t let the 2007 publication date fool you: what he says is still applicable, especially the part about how anyone for whatever reason can be tempted or convinced to steal your personal information. As technologies proliferate some of the details will change but that is a separate matter of keeping up. He says so in the last chapter. I’m sure the author will continue to publish new books as needed. One can also access Kim Komando who is an expert in digital protections or you can access any of the vendors (including himself) or technologies Abagnale mentions throughout the book. It is short and definitely worth spending a day to read.
February 2, 2021
I was given this book by my financial advisor, and unfortunately it reads as very dated. A number of the tips are good ones, but ones that have already been drilled into me by my company's computer security team. The author spends a lot of time talking about fraud as related to checks - when is the last time you even saw someone write a check at a store? Or mail a check to the electric company? It really is time for an update
February 20, 2021
Solid guide to preventing identity theft at the time it was published. At this point, even though we're only a handful of years out, it serves as insight into the evolution of identity theft at a particular period right at the beginning of the facebook revolution. Many of the insights he suggests have been adopted, from consumers having regular reviews of credit scores to two factor authentication. Interesting, but certainly could stand a second edition at this point.
July 21, 2024
this book is written by a former identity thief. the author describes many techniques through which bad actors obtained social security numbers, replicate checks and overall take over identity of someone in USA. the book is quite dated - many of those technologies are no longer in use and the digital privacy law framework has significantly changed. interesting perspective though, as many of the techniques are pure social engineering, still applicable today with slightly different targets.
October 21, 2023
Noone is immune from identity theft. It is a growing problem and can destroy people's lives overnight without perpetrator and victim ever meeting.
Abagnale uses 'Stealing Your Life' to highlight the dangers of the internet in identity theft and suggests ways to strengthen protections when living a financial life online. Still of merit today, eighteen years after publication.
Abagnale uses 'Stealing Your Life' to highlight the dangers of the internet in identity theft and suggests ways to strengthen protections when living a financial life online. Still of merit today, eighteen years after publication.
June 24, 2017
Scary stuff. Who knew there were so many people waiting to steal your life and that it could be so easy for them to do so. The book is well-written and holds the reader's interest. I would write more, but I have to go check my credit report and change my passwords.
June 27, 2019
A good insight into how to guard against identity theft but still somewhat dated. It's unfortunate how quickly information on this topic gets outdated, but it still provides a good basis for protection.
December 26, 2019
Stealing Your Life is easy to read and contains a great deal of useful information and advice about protecting your personal information. Definitely a great read for anyone hoping to protect themselves from an increasingly prevalent crime.
December 22, 2018
He has some very interesting ideas. Will change and future
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January 14, 2020Unfortunately, it's easier than you think!
November 27, 2025
Published in 2007, so probably obsolete in many aspects. Also, needed a microscope to read the extremely tiny print. Not worth the effort.
December 9, 2025
Very dated and it didn’t age well.
November 29, 2012
I found this book to be an important resource in understanding the dangers of the identity theft world. I recently attended a seminar in which Mr. Abagnale discussed this very subject. In fact, much of what he discussed in his seminar has been repeated here. I picked up the book to get further information on the subject. What I found is that I got most of the same information from the seminar. That being said, the author puts forward many good points about how thieves work in this world, and just why this is such a prevalent crime. He convinced me of many changes that I need to make in my personal habits to be safer, but most of the book focuses on stories and examples of the crime. Some of these were somewhat repetitive, and some where more illustrative than others. The book is simple, but well written. I again, it's great flaw is its repetitive nature. As mentioned by other reviewers it is heavy with stories, lighter on practical solutions and suggestions. I do think this is an important book to read because of the subject matter, but I would have preferred more suggestions on how to prevent such terrifying things from striking mine and my loved ones lives.
April 12, 2025
I, in fact, did not finish reading this book. I found it too depressing and too mind boggling to think of all the different ways that someone could steal your identity and use your credit if they have a mind to.
I generally think it’s a good idea to freeze your debit cards and use only your credit cards. I found this a good rule of thumb of how to control things. Also to put a freeze on your credit reports. Which means no one can open a new line of credit without you knowing about it. In addition I like to use LifeLock.
Other than that this guy just scared the hell out of me.
I generally think it’s a good idea to freeze your debit cards and use only your credit cards. I found this a good rule of thumb of how to control things. Also to put a freeze on your credit reports. Which means no one can open a new line of credit without you knowing about it. In addition I like to use LifeLock.
Other than that this guy just scared the hell out of me.
January 25, 2008
This book will make you paranoid. Abagnale goes over dozens of true life cases of identify theft and gives examples of how easy it is to steal someone's personal information. He also spends a good deal of the book going over the steps you'll need to take in case your identity is stolen. I had checked this book out from the library after reading an excerpt online and after finishing it, I went online and bought myself a copy of the book so I could own it. There's too much valuable information in here for me to risk not having it at hand just in case.
July 25, 2013
What a scary book.
Written by Frank Abagnale...you know, the guy from Catch Me If You Can..it highlights the problem of identity theft and what you can do to protect yourself from being a victim.
The fact that Abagnale highlights that he could find a person's social security number, birthdate, salary, bank account numbers, mother's, wife's and children's names starting with nothing more than just an address is frightening.
This book makes me want to check my accounts daily and shred every piece of paper that I touch.
Written by Frank Abagnale...you know, the guy from Catch Me If You Can..it highlights the problem of identity theft and what you can do to protect yourself from being a victim.
The fact that Abagnale highlights that he could find a person's social security number, birthdate, salary, bank account numbers, mother's, wife's and children's names starting with nothing more than just an address is frightening.
This book makes me want to check my accounts daily and shred every piece of paper that I touch.
March 5, 2025
This book is both a fascinating story and a cautionary tale about identity theft. It shows how easily someone could manipulate the system—then and now—though modern criminals must constantly adapt. It takes real skill—why squander it on crime instead of something worthwhile? I especially appreciated how the character’s talents, once used for deception, were ultimately put to work catching criminals. Well-written and engaging, it’s a compelling read that stays with you long after you finish.
April 16, 2008
Had some good advice on preventing identity theft, also advice on how to recover from it if necessary. I didn't agree with his advice on credit card use. Also, it made me a bit paranoid. Coincided with trying to refinance our mortgage, and I was afraid to give out personal information, which makes refinancing a bit difficult. LOL.
June 24, 2010
This book is amazing, scary, but amazing. Really interesting to understand identity theft from this perspective. And I adore Frank Abagnale, he's a genius runaway, who should give speeches at every commencement. He knows how to instill core values into his speeches. Nonetheless, this book is worth your while.
April 21, 2011
"Amazing" is not quite the word I would use to describe this read, I would call it "required reading" for all my friends. Great tips for those who are anxious about identity theft and want to be proactive about taking steps to help prevent it. The author shares some pretty fun stories to make this a quick read, this isn't just a list of things to do or not do.
May 20, 2014
I have never been so paranoid after reading a book! The first half of the book was spent telling freaky stories about identity theft, and then it gives some tips about how to avoid getting your identity stolen, and at the end it says that even if you follow those tips, there is no sure-fire way to avoid it, so if you do have problems, it gives some ideas of what to do.
December 6, 2007
A real eye opener. If you haven't taken steps to protect your personal info, you will after reading this. It covers the obvious things you probably know and then digs deeper into things you'd never think of. Pretty scary stuff!
April 12, 2008
By the author of Catch Me If You Can, this book is a how-to for avoiding and combating identity theft. It offered good tips on how to protect myself, some of which I adopted, but that doesn't make it a terribly wonderful read.
September 3, 2008
As the victim of identity theft, I found this book very helpful. I have always been extremely careful with my personal information and am still wondering how my information was stolen. This should be a must read for everyone....especially if you never thought it would happen to you.
September 16, 2008
No one can hide from identity theft, not even the dead! The best defense is constant surveillance of your credit report. There are many other valuable tips in this book, but this one is key. The author tells you how to do this free online. Well worth reading!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews