He became famous for his extraordinary ability to fool people – and now ex-con man Frank Abagnale is warning that artificial intelligence is giving today's fraudsters an arsenal he could only have dreamed of.

The former con man, whose story inspired Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, says AI is making scams faster, cheaper and harder to spot, with criminals able to create convincing fake identities, voices and messages at enormous scale.

Abagnale made the warning while speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association's Compliance and Risk Management Conference in Washington, DC, this week. 

The 78-year-old has spent decades working with financial institutions, businesses and government agencies on fraud prevention and says he has now seen the problem evolve far beyond traditional forgery and check scams.

His own basic precautions include freezing his credit, limiting the number of checks he writes and keeping relatively few apps on his phone.

But he says consumers and businesses now need to think much more carefully about who is actually on the other end of a phone, email or video call.

His central message is simple: Don't automatically trust what you see or hear – verify it independently.

That is becoming increasingly important as AI allows criminals to imitate real people with increasingly convincing voices, images and video.

The technology can dramatically increase the number of potential targets, allowing scammers to send vast numbers of highly convincing messages at little cost.

Abagnale, who evaded the FBI for years, told the audience that information stolen in previous data breaches can remain useful to criminals for years, particularly when it is combined with newer AI tools.

The result is a shift away from simply breaking into computer systems and toward manipulating the people using them.

One particularly striking example came in Hong Kong in 2024, when an employee at engineering company Arup was tricked into transferring about $25.6 million after joining a video conference featuring AI-generated versions of senior colleagues. 

The employee had initially been suspicious of a message requesting a confidential transaction, but the fake video meeting made the request appear legitimate.

The case showed how criminals can combine old-fashioned social engineering with new technology to overcome a victim's doubts.

Real estate is emerging as another major target, particularly because property transactions involve large sums of money and rely heavily on identity checks.

The American Land Title Association (ALTA) said this month that 59 percent of title firms surveyed had encountered at least one attempted seller-impersonation fraud in 2025, compared with 28 percent in its previous 2024 survey. 

These scams involve criminals pretending to be property owners in an attempt to sell homes or land they do not actually own.

The latest ALTA research, based on responses from 245 title professionals across 40 states, Washington, DC, and the US Virgin Islands, also found that 45 percent of firms had seen an attempt during the month before the survey. 

Deepfake images and voices are already part of the fraudsters' toolkit, with 58 percent of respondents describing their use as at least somewhat common.

And the potential losses are substantial: Among firms that had experienced seller-impersonation attempts, one in four reported a paid claim connected to the fraud, while half of those disclosing average claim costs reported losses above $100,000. 

The warning comes as the mortgage industry itself is increasingly experimenting with AI, although adoption remains relatively early.

A separate survey released this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators and Boston Consulting Group found that nearly 60 percent of respondents regarded regulatory and compliance uncertainty as their biggest obstacle to greater AI adoption. 

The survey also found that nearly all participating mortgage firms had at least one or two AI applications in production, but that most uses were concentrated on productivity and support rather than core mortgage processes.

For consumers, the lesson from Abagnale and the mortgage industry is that seeing something convincing is no longer necessarily enough to prove it is genuine.

A familiar voice on the phone, a realistic-looking video or an email containing personal information could all potentially be part of a carefully constructed scam.

That means people should independently verify requests involving money or sensitive information rather than relying solely on the contact details or communication channel provided by the person making the request.

For property transactions in particular, industry experts recommend using multiple layers of verification, including independent identity checks, secure authentication and direct contact through trusted channels.

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