Sounds like a movie. At least DreamWorks thinks so, and cameras will roll next January, when Leonardo DiCaprio becomes available for the starring role.

Published in 1980, the book is being reissued not to hype the movie--Simon & Schuster sold the rights long ago--but because it's been selling on the Internet for $100 a copy, Abagnale said in an interview.

The book covers his exploits between ages 16 and 21. If it's to be believed, he made out like a bandit, in both the romance and larceny departments.

Abagnale is now 52, and, in the storied tradition of setting a thief to catch a thief, has spent the latter half of his life teaching cops how to catch criminals.

On behalf of the FBI and paying his own travel expenses, he does freebie training for law enforcement groups around the country on how to combat forgery, counterfeiting, embezzlement and Internet fraud.

"It's by way of paying back the government" for releasing him from prison after serving one-third of a 12-year sentence, he said. Abagnale also runs his own firm, dispensing his expertise to paying clients.

"What I did 35 years ago is 200 times easier to do today," he said. To forge an airline check in 1965 required an expensive press and high-resolution negatives. "Today you can design it on a PC or go to Kinko's and make a color copy."

But his best masquerade, as a pilot, wouldn't fly today. Hijacking and bombing have made security too tight.

Abagnale traveled the world free in a Pan Am uniform that, along with his 6-foot height and prematurely gray hair, made him look much older than his 16 to 18 years. "It was a great front for passing checks," and he billed the airline for posh hotel accommodations. But he stayed out of the cockpit.

Under a different alias, Abagnale slipped into a doctor's role and supervised medical students and nurses on the night shift at a hospital in Marietta, Ga. Then, pretending to have a Harvard law degree, he found work as an assistant state attorney general in Louisiana.

Next he spent a summer semester teaching sociology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "You just read a chapter ahead of your students," said Abagnale, a high school dropout. "They never suspected."

Always on the lam, he couldn't overstay his welcome. "When people got too inquisitive, I'd just leave."

Overseas, he offended the authorities in half the countries of Europe. He spent a very unpleasant six months in a French jail and a pleasant six months in a Swedish lockup.

In the book's last chapter, Abagnale makes a couple of imaginative escapes seldom seen this side of fiction, exiting the last page a free man. In real life, he soon landed in a U.S. prison, where he languished until the FBI found better uses for him.

Catch Me if You Can, written with Stan Redding, is a racy and rollicking read. But Abagnale is glad those years are long past.

"I'd love to tell you that I'm a born-again Christian, which would be untrue, or that prison rehabilitated me, which would be absurd," he said.

The truth is that he was almost glad to get caught. Straight life agrees with him. The father of sons 21, 19 and 16, Abagnale lives in Tulsa, Okla., with his wife of 24 years.