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Summary: Informative follow-up to "Catch Me If You Can"
Review: "Art of the Steal" is an informative book from master confidence man Frank Abagnale. It begins as a sequel to Abagnale's "Catch Me If You Can" (filling in the years between the end of the first book and Abagnale's reinvention as a fraud-prevention guru), and quickly becomes a sort of reference book and strategy guide, enumerating numerous prevalent financial scams, and describing sensible techniques for preventing fraud. Abagnale speaks at length about check, credit-card and ATM fraud, counterfeit designer apparel and consumer goods, Internet-based fraud, and security features of modern U.S. currency. The book is well-organized, with plenty of anecdotes throughout (the most entertaining is a phone scam in which somebody uses a 1-900 area code to achieve dubious results). Overall, "Art of the Steal" is not quite as much fun as "Catch Me If You Can", but it's an admirable effort nonetheless. This is a more business-minded book, where you'll find lots of good information, if it's the sort of information you're looking for.
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Summary: This book changed my view on the world
Review: A good book but I saw nothing that common sense would not tell you! The author seemed a bit paranoid regarding mailing bills and having them snatched from your mail box.
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Summary: Good book -- common sense would give you the same!
Review: A good book but I saw nothing that common sense would not tell you! The author seemed a bit paranoid regarding mailing bills and having them snatched from your mail box.
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Summary: Introduction to Another World
Review: Abagnale is enjoying recent publicity with the release of "Catch Me If You Can," and I caught an interview with him on TV. I wanted to read "The Art of The Steal" in part because of Abagnale's incredible life (or more accurately lives)and also because of my own research interests in criminal behavior, especially antisocial Internet behavior. The book is a great glimpse into the mind of an intelligent con man. There's always a loophole, an angle...Abagnale opens your eyes to them either for entertainment or for business/information security improvement.At times it sounds like he is gloating about his cons, but that is a small price to pay to get his explanations about how some of these cons work. His outline of one cash register scheme was so incredible to me, I had to act it out with play money to my wife. This is a short read, but a blast to someone who enjoys learning about how the other side works.
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Summary: The Art of the Steal
Review: Amazing! This book by Frank Abagnale will open your eyes very quickly to the world in which we live. At first I was hesitant to support an ex-con by purchasing his insights; however, I discovered that his information has always been public knowledge, but only to criminals. Therefore, by making known the elaborate scams taking place today, he provides long overdue education to the good, law abiding individual, and he never charges fees to law enforcement authorities for his input. He covers everything from checking accounts, credit cards, currency, telephone, internet, shopping, to most importantly: the stealing of one's identity. He details the importance of staying abreast of one's credit, and to the importance of being proactive vs. being reactive. Most importantly, the book is engulfed with many real life examples. I'd highly recommend this reading to anyone, not just business. This is the crime of the future, which is already here, that will unfortunatley affect many of us.
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Summary: Strong medicine in sweet sauce
Review: Every person who has two pennies to rub together should read this book. This book should be required reading for ALL law enforcement, consumer finance, and business management personnel, to name just a few. I went through this book at just under the speed of sound. Abagnale took a whole bunch of valuable and complex information and covered it with a string of fascinating and funny stories so that you swallow the whole thing straight down and don't realize how much you learned while being entertained. One tip that hasn't made its way into the book yet: Gel pen ink is the only ink forgers and counterfeiters have not yet learned how to wash off. Buy a cheap gel pen and use it to sign all your checks and credit-card slips.
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Summary: A former con man describes common frauds and scams.
Review: Frank Abagnale gained notoriety in his youth as a master forger and imposter. He passed over two million dollars of phony checks and he pretended to be a doctor, a lawyer and an airline pilot during his successful crime spree. Abagnale described his misdeeds in his first book, "Catch Me If You Can." After years on the run, Abagnale was finally caught and he served prison time. Finally, he decided to give up his criminal ways and he is now making more money than he ever did as a criminal. For twenty-five years, Abagnale has been a "fraud prevention specialist." He helps businesses to recognize and prevent common types of fraud. In his new book, "The Art of the Steal," Abagnale explains that fraud is big business and everyone is affected by it. The billions lost by businesses as a result of fraud are partially recovered by raising consumer prices. Fraud is more common today than ever before, with the growth of the Internet and other forms of modern technology. Today, it is easier than ever to print checks that look like the real thing and to create false identity papers. In addition to counterfeit money, counterfeit goods (including medicines and baby formulas) flood the market. Ponzi and pyramid schemes and other investment scams are still going strong. Why is "The Art of the Steal" an important book for consumers and businessmen? Unfortunately, most people are complacent about security issues, and we don't take even the most obvious steps to protect ourselves from frauds and scams. Abagnale encourages us to be more careful about giving away important personal information over the Internet or the telephone. He warns us to shred personal papers before throwing them in the trash, and to be aware that if an offer appears too good to be true, that it probably is a scam. He also explains how businesses can avoid becoming the victims of embezzlers. Statistics show that embezzlers steal over $100 billion dollars a year from their employers. The only negative I have about "The Art of the Steal" is that it is written in a dry and pedestrian manner, with a number of grammatical mistakes that the editor did not catch. However, the quality of the writing aside, "The Art of the Steal" is a worthwhile book. Considering the necessity of protecting ourselves from the myriad types of fraud and scams that are out there today, it is important for all of us to be more knowledgeable and circumspect about security issues.
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Summary: Good but not quite what I expected
Review: Frank Abagnale got a lot of attention with his first book 'Catch Me if You Can'. However I very much doubt that this book would have made him as popular as the first one did. This is by all means a good and informative book. However, I based my expectation based on the author's earlier work. I will not get into the details of the content of the book, because I think that the title makes it clear what the book is all about. Compared to the author's firs book, which was captivating, entertaining and really difficult to put down, this one falls a bit flat. Yes, there is some interesting information, but I got the feeling that he was rushing from one topic into another as he was writing the book. In other words it feels a bit dry and many times I felt that he was just listing some facts and examples without getting enough into details. Another thing that did not meet my expectations is the fact that his whole attitude made a 180 degree turn. What makes Frank's first book fun is the fact that he is a lovable scam artist. This time he looks down on scams and calls other scam artists 'criminals'. Again, had I not had an expectation based on the first book by the same author my opinion would be completely different. All in all if you like to read about scams you should get some new information from this book, but I doubt that it will captivate you.
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Summary: almost tempting to try the examples
Review: Frank Abagnale starts off with some very interesting and specifiic details in a book that's pretty good reading. Informative, and offering a few examples that likely work for con-men, the first 2/3 of the book are focused and follow a coherent course. In the final portion of the book, maybe just for filler, the author then muddies the course and gets ambiguous, giving us information that really does not explain or solve anything for the reader--it's vague and general themes that we all hear constantly, and the only real way to get the monkey off our back would be to climb into some hole and shut the computer off.
Fortunately though, Frank offers a lot of good wisdom elsewhere in his book, and shows promise as a continuing author. I thinks it's almost humorous just how blatantly daring somebody is to pull off these cons, and in broad daylight, so to speak. People seem to have a hard time with simple details; any cop will tell you that, and simple things are what get us every time. For a followup book, I would hope that Frank Abagnale, Jr., draft a bible of every known con game played out, in existence, and that bible become a household reference book everytime some joker calls us on the phone or sends us phony email. It seems the elderly could certainly use some help in refreshing their power of discernment. In essence, the con plays are anything unknown; they are used every day and the cops are all too familiar with them. By writing them down, maybe we could recognize a 'new one' for our own information, and be able to reference the 'old tricks' for our future reference and preservation. Frank certainly writes in a very understandable and informative manner.
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Summary: This book changed my view on the world
Review: I picked a book - "Catch me if you can" on the counter at the grocery store. It's been two-three month since I see the movie. So I decide to check how book would be different from the motion picture. Needless to say I was eating this book by the hour, by the end of the second day I was over and I were still hungry. I went to the store and bought "The Art of Steal". I probably will never forget this book experience. It changed my view on the world, it changed me. I would joins Tom Hanks and everybody else who would advice this book as something everybody should read. I gave this book 4 start just because I think that Frank Abagnail has not picture the world of Internet fraud quite correctly. As IT specialist I felt that Frank sometimes oversimplifies or making the problems bigger then they really are. The book is not a story like and it's contains a lot tips, facts, etc., which might get tiresome to read, so I had sometimes to force myself through chapters.
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