Recapturing Frank Abagnale's Speech Given to UVU

Frank Abagnale, a New Yorker made famous by Film Director/Producer Stephen Spielberg's movie "Catch Me If You Can," was a guest speaker at UVU today telling his version of his teenage adventures when he took advantage of the banking system and wrote fraudulent checks totaling 2.5 million dollars in 26 countries.

The story began at the age of 16 when he met his parents at the family courthouse. The judge told Frank that his parents were getting divorced. Being confused over the option of choosing a parent to live with, he left upset and wouldn't see his mom for another 7 years.

Unable to obtain a decent working wage at 16, he lied about his age telling people that he was 10 years older than he really was. At age 16 he was 6 ft. tall, and had partial gray hair. Even then he saw that he was unable to obtain good work with good wages.

After forging a few checks, he decided it was time to get out of New York, so he wouldn't get caught. He started his criminal career posing as a Pan-American Airways pilot where he posed as a pilot flying around the world riding in the jump-seat in the cockpit of other airlines so he wouldn't get caught. He was so brilliant that he came up with ways to get a uniform and an identification card for free. He did so by posing as someone he wasn't and giving clever lies to people in order to get what he wanted. Pan-Am estimates that from the age of 16 to 18 he boarded 256 airplanes and had flown a million miles to 26 different countries without stepping on-board of a single Pan-Am airplane; all that flying and hotel stay on the airline's budget.

Continuing to fraud checks along the way to gain money, the FBI eventually caught up to him. It was time to move on. He went to Georgia and posed as a doctor. He knew exactly what to do in order to aggravate the other doctors so they would avoid him. He was only asked to be on duty for 2 weeks during his time at the hospital.

He went on to be a lawyer. A law degree wasn't required to be a lawyer in Louisiana, so he spent 2 months studying and passed the bar. He eventually resigned.

He continued to fraud checks and even figured out how to magnetically encode deposit slips, so that people who used those slips would be depositing into his account.

Frank was only arrested once, in Southern France on a Sweedish warrant. He was convicted of forgery and sentenced to prison.

Spielberg recreated every little detail according to the prison log-book Spielberg also went to Sweden penetentary to learn about Frank's past.

A U.S. Federal judge sentenced him to 12 years in prison in Virginia, but he only served 4 years in prison. He was then offered the chance to work with the FBI to help the fraud dept. out. He accepted that job and continues working with the FBI 35 year later. He resides in Charleston SC.

He had little to do with the movie. He didn't participate in the making of the film. Spielberg did his own research. According to Spielberg, he chose to immortalize Abagnale on film, not for his past crimes, but for what he has done in the 30 some odd years since for his country.

Abagnale and his family were very pleased with the outcome of the film.

Frank says that if he were as brilliant as people say that he is, he wouldn't have found it necessary to break the law. Although people find it very fascinating what he did, he looks at what he did as immoral, unethical and a burden to him.

He ended his speech talking about his dad and the importance of fathers. All 16 year olds are just children, and like all children, they need their mother and their father. ALL children are entitled a mother and father.

He cried himself to sleep every night until he was 19 and missed out on the luxuries that ordinary teenagers enjoy.

Frank said, "I owe this country 800 times more than he could ever repay it, for giving me a second chance these past 36 years." He has turned down 3 pardons from 3 sitting President's of the United States, because he doesn't feel like that would pardon his actions.

In ending his speech, he mentioned that his wife changed his life. He gives all credit for everything he has, was or ever given to his wife.

He reminds men to remember what it means to "actually be a man." "Being a man has nothing to do with money, achievements, skills, accomplishments, possessions. A real man loves his wife, is faithful to his wife, who is a real man next to god and his country and places his wife first. "Nothing has brought me more joy than striving to be a good husband and father."

Zuckerberg Speaks at BYU

When I heard Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg was coming to town, I jumped all over the opportunity to go listen to what the youngest billionaire in the world had to say about success and technology.

Last week U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch invited Mark Z. to come to Provo and have an informal forum with him in front of a crowd of nearly 11,000. This was the first time Mark has ever visited a college campus to talk. Mark even mentioned how nervous he was to speak in front of so many people. He had never spoken to such a crowd. He quickly got over his shyness and did a good job talking about his company, and the major things he looks for in future employees and entrepreneurs. Senator Hatch is a form BYU alum, and did quite a candid job asking Mark some questions that had been submitted by BYU students.

Some things that stood out to me were a few simple things Mark said. He mentioned that the key to any company is the people who are employed. Make sure that everyone who you hire is great at what they do.

Mark took a psychology class while at Harvard and mentioned how it is the most important course along with sociology. It's important for

people to know what's going on with their friends and family. He just helped to provide the tools necessary to allow this.

My favorite part was the part where he mentioned what he looks for in hiring people. Passion. He said, “We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about. What we really look for when we’re interviewing people is what they’ve shown an initiative to do on their own.”

What have you taken initiative to lead lately? He wants to hire people who think that his organization is broken and want to help make it better in other ways that they are currently not using.

After this technology forum I got the chance to talk to one of my best friends from Spain, Javier. He is doing an internship with a local Spanish tv station. He wanted to interview a couple people about what they had just heard, so he interviewed me in Spanish, along with a good friend of mine, Cristina. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went.

The Return of OMD

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of music, especially 80s music. I have spent the last few years rediscovering songs from my childhood. I think I've done a pretty good job recovering songs that I can remember hearing when I was a kid. The best part is that all the songs I remember are still big hits. I think I have really good taste in music.

Some of the earliest songs I can remember hearing are songs from Tears for Fears, Animotion, and OMD. How cool is it to be able to attend one of these familiar groups in concert?

OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), A British pop group organized in 1978, came to Salt Lake City on March 23, 2011 for the first time in 23 years, and guess who was there? Me.

I had nearly forgotten how much I love synthesizer-pop music. It's great. I didn't really know what to expect from these guys, but I was very surprised with how hip they still are. The lead vocalist, Andy McClusky, is 51 and had the most fantastic almost spazzy type dance moves.

The concert held at the Depot was sold out. There was a good range of attendees, but I'd guess that the average age was upper 30s.

They put on a terrific show, and I would love to see them again in concert. My biggest disappointment was that they didn't play "Secrets". After returning to the stage to do an encore, my friends and I thought for sure they would be playing Secrets. Instead OMD played a song off their new album and Electricity, their first hit song they wrote at the age of 16.

The band apologized for taking so long to return to Salt Lake, and promised that they would return soon.

A Different Perspective

Recently BYU Forward, Brandon Davies, was suspended from the most successful basketball season to take place at BYU due to an honor code violation. As you can imagine what would happen to a player who plays for a team that is nationally ranked #3, he instantly not only became the talk of the town, but the talk of the country.

Davies' situation has become a number one topic all over ESPN and several news agencies and blogs. He has been one of the top Tweeted topics on Twitter over the past few days, consisting of over 185 million tweeters.

I respect the fact that BYU has a standard and sticks to it, but I would like to point out that Davies has gone through much, much more than what an average student would have had to go through if the exact same rule had been broken. Has his punishment been detrimental? I think so.

The church is centered around the fact that the natural man is evil and constantly committing imperfections that prevent man from returning to live with God someday. Because of this fact, a savior was needed and a gospel was created to give man the opportunity to be forgiven of his sins through repentance. It's a church of forgiveness.

I believe that some kind of restitution had to take place in order to teach a lesson, but was it necessary to take away hopes and dreams, destroy a chance of a lifetime and basically inadvertently defame that crap out of a student just because he had sex with his girlfriend? The school should have taken into consideration the effect this would have on Brandon Davies. Was public humiliation part of the god's forgiveness process? I don't know, God works in mysterious ways, but it's possible.

If you asked me what a proper shellacking would have been, I would have said a suspension from the regular season, and maybe take away the guy's scholarship for next year. This student has had it far worse than any normal student who would have committed the same violation. So if every honor code violation punishment is resolved on a case-to-case basis, why couldn't this case take a slightly different turn to avoid broadcasting a man's sins to the world? Something so personal that should only be known between you, your bishop and God; according to the LDS faith. I suppose Davies knew what he got himself into, so technically nobody should feel bad for him; however, I wonder how many other BYU athletes are sweating bullets right now?