Introduction
In the movie, Catch Me If You Can, the offender, Frank Abagnale, is an ardent fraudster who has successfully managed to impersonate a doctor, pilot, and lawyer without being exposed. The failure of Frank’s father (Frank Sr.) to secure a bank loan forces his family to move from their luxury home to a small house. The financial crisis causes a strain on Frank’s parents, leading to marital problems. Frank’s first own criminal acts begin on his first day at the public school when he deceives the class of being a new substitute teacher.
Frank runs away from home upon discovering that his parents are getting a divorce. After running out of funds, he tries to con bank tellers but is unsuccessful. Later, Frank pretends to be a college student writing a report on Pan Am Airlines. He uses this chance to acquire more information about the airline and steals a pilot’s uniform. He impersonates one of their employees to forge the airline payroll checks and steal more than $1.3 million (Maze, 2022). Frank expands his schemes when he learns about check routing from a female bank teller. This inspires Frank to acquire a check coding machine, which he uses to create checks for lagers amounts.
Several years later, after Carl Hanratty, an FBI agent, nearly caught him, he enrolls in a hospital and pretends to be a physician after taking an interest in a nurse called Brenda Strong. He fakes a resume and a certificate from Harvard medical school, enabling him to get hired. Frank uses his position to influence junior staff to be proactive and make medical calls at the hospital since he has no medical experience. Therefore, he falsified checks to con his way to hotels, banks, and even transport.
Frank’s check fraud investigation begins when Hanratty tracks one of his most recent falsified checks to a hotel. He moves in to arrest him, but Frank pretends to be an FBI agent after the same suspect (Maze, 2022). Hanratty realizes that he has been fooled after Frank manages to escape. Frank’s criminal investigation proves difficult as the fingerprints he left in the room have no match, and there is no record of him. After several months, Frank calls Hanratty with a proposal to meet, which gives the FBI agent hope to continue with his investigation. He realizes that Barry Allen, Frank’s pseudo name, is a character in a movie and deduces that the suspect is a minor.
After seven months, Hanratty traces Frank in France, where he is arrested. After two years, he is released into Hanratty’s custody by the French police. He was tried and convicted in the United States for 12 years (Maze, 2022). However, after four years in jail, he decides to help Hanratty with forgery investigations, which sees him serve the rest of his sentence working for the department. Lastly, as disclosed through the text at the end of the film, Frank is happily married and still friends and working with Hanratty.
Analysis
The social learning theory stipulates that crime can be learned through observing and modeling other people’s behavior. It emphasizes that delinquency is more likely to occur when people increasingly associate with individuals involved in crime (Becker, 2018). In this case, Frank’s association with his father may have contributed to his criminal life. Frank learned how to be a con from his father, Frank Abagnale Sr. For example, at the age of 16, Frank witnessed his father con a saleslady into lending him a suit to pose as a chauffeur. Additionally, due to his father’s record of fraud, the Chase Manhattan Bank denied him a loan. Similarly, when his family moves due to financial problems, Frank is forced to join a public school where he poses as a substitute teacher for a week after dismissing the real tutor. After realizing Frank’s trick, the school management summoned his parents. However, while Frank’s mother is distraught, his father is impressed by his performance (Maze, 2022). Thus, it can be deduced that Frank’s learned and modeled the criminal behavior from his father, whom he had witnessed engaging in fraud.
The social learning theory’s concept of differential reinforcement indicates that individuals engage in crime if they anticipate or receive particular rewards. Thus, the benefits of crime may be a motivating reason for criminals (Stinson, 2020). In this case, Frank idolized his father, and he wanted to perfect his con skills to continue impressing him. Additionally, the financial gains obtained through crime encouraged Frank to join criminal life. At first, Frank experienced challenges in conning people, but later, he became an expert in fraud, where he gained a lot of money. For instance, he successfully created fake checks for Pan Am airlines after pretending to be a pilot, where he accumulated massive finances. He later learned how to generate more checks using a check coding machine. The immense finances that Frank obtained through his conmanship helped him live a good life. For instance, he lived in fancy hotels, traveled to different places, and purchased an Aston-Martin vehicle (Maze, 2022). Likewise, he bought a Cadillac for his father and tried to use his money to unite his estranged parents. Thus, wealth accumulated through conmanship may have lured Frank to criminality.
The concept of differential reinforcement stresses that individuals are more likely to engage in unlawful acts if they remain unpunished. This implies that criminals become more motivated to break the law when they are not apprehended because they believe they can outwit law enforcement officers (Stinson, 2020). In this case, Frank escaped police capture for a very long time. For instance, when Hanratty traced Frank to a hotel to arrest him, he posed as an FBI agent claiming to pursue the same fraudster and managed to escape. Additionally, Hanratty’s efforts to capture Frank during his engagement ceremony are also thwarted as Frank runs again. He later moved to Europe, where he continued generating fake checks and swindling money from banks. It was only after several months that Frank was arrested in France. Throughout his conmanship, Frank impersonated a pilot, lawyer, and doctor and scammed millions of dollars from unsuspecting people without getting arrested (Maze, 2022). Getting away with such offenses only emboldened him to continue perfecting his criminal skills. Therefore, an early arrest would have deterred Frank from becoming an ardent criminal.
The rational choice theory may also explain Frank’s involvement in crime. The model indicates that individuals analyze the benefits and risks when making a decision. It proposes that individuals only engage in an act whose benefits outweigh the risks (Robinson & Cussen, 2017). In this case, Frank chose to become a criminal because he was receiving a lot of financial gains, and his chances of being arrested were few. Frank conned people to survive in his initial years because he had run away from home. However, years later, he continued forging checks out of his own free will. It can be argued that the money he gained through fraud motivated him to become an ardent criminal. Even after calling Hanratty and insisting that he was done being a criminal, he still moved to Europe and continued his acts of forgery (Maze, 2022). Therefore, it is evident that Frank became a criminal because he was attracted to the financial gains. He could have stopped after his first successful attempts, but the greed for easy money blinded him. Escaping arrests three times only encouraged him to go further.
The general strain theory can also elucidate why Frank became a criminal. This framework presumes that deviant traits may stem from stressors that increase the propensity of misconduct due to anger or frustration, resulting in crime (Rorie, 2019). In this case, Frank suffered immense stress following his family’s financial woes and his parent’s divorce, which made him flee from his home. After leaving home, Frank realized that he did not have any money and resolved to con people to survive. Therefore, his family’s bankruptcy and his parent’s divorce may be what triggered Frank to become a fraudster. This is evident through his efforts to use his money to unite his parents. He believed that financial challenge was the primary cause of his parent’s separation, and therefore if he provided enough money, his family would reunite. This implies that if Frank’s family did not experience bankruptcy, there is a possibility that his parents would not have divorced. Thus, Frank would not have faced the dilemma of choosing who to live with, which would have prevented him from leaving home and becoming a criminal.
Generally, Frank’s involvement may have stemmed from a myriad of issues. The social learning, rational choice, and strain theories effectively describe the cause of his criminal behavior from diverse perspectives. The social learning model links his criminality to his environment, while the rational choice theory portrays him as a sensible person who willingly chose to become a fraudster. Moreover, the general strain concept associates his criminality with social stressors. All these models can adequately explain the cause of delinquency among criminals.
Conclusion
Frank is portrayed as a notorious fraudster who steals a massive amount of money from unsuspecting individuals. Despite being a wanted criminal, he manages to escape police dragnets several times. He is able to impersonate a pilot, doctor, and lawyer without being exposed, which only motivates him further into criminal life until his arrest. The social learning, rational choice, and strain theories can adequately expound on the cause of Frank’s criminality. In regards to the social learning concept, Frank’s close relationship with his father, who had a record of fraud, might have influenced his behavior. Similarly, the rewards that Frank gained from forging checks might have lured him to a life of crime. In addition, his ability to escape arrest may have further encouraged him to continue engaging in unlawful acts. Alternatively, the rational choice theory presumes that Frank chose to become a criminal because the financial gains he received from such operations outweighed his risk of being captured. However, the strain model stipulates that certain stressors like financial woes and his parent’s divorce may have contributed to his criminality.
References
Becker, R. (2018). Criminal justice in the United States. Lulu. com.
Maze, J. (2022). Catch me if you can [Video] YouTube. Web.
Robinson, S., & Cussen, T. (2017). The criminology and criminal justice companion. Springer.
Rorie, M. L. (2019). The handbook of white-collar crime. Wiley-Blackwell.
Stinson, P. M. (2020). Criminology explains police violence. University of California Press.