Louisiana Voice

Alan Logan is revisiting the story of a famous con man who held a SEMINAR about his life as a con man for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) a year ago and in so doing, may have fraudulently received a speaking fee estimated at $20,000 because of LABI’s apparent inability to recognize a con.

But you really can’t blame LABI. The 2002 movie Catch Me if You Can, about Frank Abagnale Jr.’s mythical life as a master con man was certainly entertaining and convincing. And the film, directed by Steven Spielberg no less, featured a cast comprised of several of Hollywood’s heavy hitters: Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, James Brolen and Jennifer Garner, among others.

But as Logan watched the film and thought something just didn’t seem right. He has written a book about Abagnale called THE GREATEST HOAX ON EARTH: CATCHING TRUTH WHILE WE CAN .

In early 2020, he wrote a book about medical con man Robert Vernon Spears, who was the prime suspect in a mysterious 1959 commercial airline disaster. He compared Spears, whose story was verifiable to that of Abagnale and found that “nothing was adding up, nothing was verifiable.”

In his own book, Catch Me if You Can, published in 1980, Abagnale claimed that between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, he impersonated a pilot for Pan American Airlines, a doctor in Georgia, a professor at Brigham Young University and a lawyer for the Louisiana Attorney General’s office in Baton Rouge and even passed the bar exam – and cashed bad checks worth more than $2 million in more than 26 countries.

Trouble is, he was in prison for much of that time and wasn’t paroled until 1974. After his release, he moved to Friendswood, Texas, where he was soon arrested again for theft.

He did meet Delta Airlines flight attendant Paula Parks from Baton Rouge (now a resident of Livingston Parish) and while stalking her, befriended her parents – from whom he stole blank checks from them and wrote $1200 in bad checks.

Abagnale appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (several times), the Today show with Tom Brokow, and on To Tell the Truth, the only time all three mystery guests lied. But reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle and The Daily Oklahoman picked up the scent of a bogus story and began picking his story apart, piece-by-lying piece.

Ken DeJean, First Assistant Attorney General in the 1970s and ‘80s, has also debunked Abagnale’s claim that he posed as a lawyer in that office. “After his second appearance on The Tonight Show, I called the producer and tried to set him straight and I talked to a reporter for The National Enquirer, which was planning to do a story on him,” DeJean said. “I gave The National Enquirer reporter a set of questions to ask Abagnale: What did the Attorney General look like? How old was he? How tall was he? Describe our office? What floor (of the State Capitol) is our office on?

“He didn’t answer a single question correctly,” DeJean said, adding that the tabloid subsequently killed the story. Abagnale described Attorney General Jack P.F. Gremillion as being in his forties, six feet tall, slim with blonde hair (he was in his sixties, short, portly, and balding).

Likewise, his claim to have been included in the FBI’s 100^th anniversary coffee table book turned out to be more of Abagnale’s flim-flam. There is such a coffee table book, but it contains no mention anywhere in it of Abagnale.

There is plenty information available to show that Abagnale has been running a con about his fictional life as an imposter but apparently no one at LABI bothered to vet him thoroughly before booking him for its seminar.

It’s apparently a fairly simple process to run a scam if no one’s checking your story.

But Logan has.

You might want to check his NEW BOOK before scheduling the next speaker for your organization.

If you believe State Sen. Gary Smith (D-Norco), then have I got a deal for you on your extended used car warranty. And just to sweeten the deal, I can put you in touch with this Nigerian prince I know who is eager to smuggle $40 million out of the country and into your bank account.

But first, of course, you’ll have to verify all your personal email account information so that your computer may be reconfigured.

After you’ve done all that, you will be asked to agree to the most difficult condition of all: the concept that the Louisiana Ethics Commission is doing a great job of keeping legislators toeing the line of ethical behavior.

It’s not that we don’t buy what Sen. Smith is selling (which we don’t). It’s just that we’ve seen this movie before and the ending is always the same for this stale formula plot.

Here are the undisputed facts:

• Brent Stevens, owner of a Los Angeles company called P2E, wants to move a defunct Bossier Parish casino to Slidell.
• State Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R-Slidell) has filed Senate Bill 243 to make the move happen.
• The bill was heard by the Senate Judiciary B Committee, where it was approved by a slim 4-3 vote.
• Committee Chairman Smith cast the deciding vote (how’s that for bipartisanship?).
• Smith’s wife Katherine is one of – count ‘em – 19 lobbyists hired by P2E founder Brent Stevens to push for approval of the move.

This is the same DIAMOND JACKS Casino in Bossier City that Stevens earlier tried to relocate to a site east of Hammond on the Tangipahoa River which is better suited to accommodating tubers and bateau boats than a floating casino.

But what is certain is that in just about any other state, legislators would never vote on a bill being LOBBIED BY A SPOUSE It just ain’t done.

Smith, when asked about the apparent conflict of interest, ethics breach, subterfuge and/or (pick one) Louisiana tradition, said he didn’t even know that his wife, a veteran lobbyist, was working on that particular issue.

“She didn’t tell me,” he sniffed, adding that her involvement with the bill “would not change my opinion that letting the people of that area vote on the issue is the correct vote.”

He said he does not discuss his wife’s clients or issues with her.

Perhaps they should communicate more so as to avoid such ethics questions in the future.

Seriously, if you buy that line, you’ve probably already purchased that car warranty, sent “good faith” money to the Nigerian prince and given up all your personal email information.

But if you have any money left to fritter away, you can always place a generous bet that the Ethics Commission will take decisive action in this matter.

There are only nine days left in our April fundraiser. Unlike other blogs, we don’t bug you every other day for contributions to keep us afloat.

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No one is really sure who first said, “You can always tell when a politician is lying: his lips are moving,” but LouisianaVoice has come up with our own variant to that adage that while not completely original, is certainly applicable.

You can always tell when a politician is feeling the heat: He first attacks the source of his problem and then he rolls out the character witnesses to attest to his integrity.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jeff Landry, current attorney general and would-be future governor of the gret stet of Looziana.

April hasn’t been exactly kind to Landry.

Were it not for the gravity of the charges against a former top Landry aid, the attorney general’s reactions would almost be laughable.

Instead, the behavior of the state’s top lawyer has quickly evolved into a display of self-righteous indignation and reprisals that only serve to further tarnish an already beleaugured office.

And a lawsuit filed by Landry over a stray cat might have been funny had it not ended up costing taxpayers $20,000 in fines against the state. More about that later.

After word leaked out of a whistleblower complaint against then-criminal division Director Pat Magee, the Baton Rouge Advocate made a routine public records request for results of an investigation conducted by an outside law firm. Landry’s response was to file a lawsuit against the reporter who made the records request.

He lost that lawsuit, which was something of an embarrassment for Landry and his office but the records he eventually released were heavily redacted but did reveal that an internal memorandum placed the blame for Magee’s alleged harassment not on Magee, but on the whistleblower who Landry said may have been guilty of sexual harassment himself for not making his complaint sooner than he did.

On Tuesday, Landry paraded a host of WOMEN STAFFERS out at a press conference in an attempt to discredit the whistleblower, former Assistant Attorney General MATTHEW DERBES who has resigned because of what he described as retaliation by Landry. Derbes has retained an attorney. He has filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a first step to filing a lawsuit on retaliation and employment discrimination against the attorney general’s office.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Sandra Schober, deputy director of the AG’s administrative services division, said that while Magee clearly engaged in inappropriate workplace conversations but that his actions failed to rise to the level of sexual harassment. Because Landry continues to refuse to release all the records of the investigation, Schober’s reasoning remains more than a little vague.

Landry, who has a QUESTIONABLE PAST as a deputy sheriff in St. Martin Parish is quick with the lawsuit trigger finger but REFUSED to sign onto a letter that dozens of other state attorneys general sent to the U.S. Department of Justice condemning the right-wing insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. His refusal, of course, was because he was INSTRUMENTAL in the attack.

Landry also got smacked down in another COURTROOM BATTLE against Gov. John Bel Edwards’s emergency declaration as the COVID-19 pandemic was spiking and before that, he lost a case in St. Martin Parish when he challenged actions by local and state election officials from accepting private, nonprofit funds to help them run elections during the pandemic.

 Then there is that MURKY STORY about a firm owned by Landry importing Mexican workers with the assistance of a felon who had broken federal immigration laws. Landry, of course, is quite outspoken in his opposition to illegal immigration.

Landry even went on a TWITTER RANT that was riddled with incorrect information and which generated tons of ridicule for the state’s top lawyer and which earned him the title of “the stupidest lawyer in the United States” – definitely not the kind of publicity a potential candidate for governor should want.

The latest humiliation for Landry’s office came when the Third Circuit Court of Appeal recently upheld a lower court judge who sanctioned the LSU Veterinarian Teaching Hospital for filing a FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT against a good Samaritan who agreed to pay up to $2,000 for treatment of a stray cat but ended up paying $4,000 and then getting sued by the attorney general’s office for an additional $1,200.

And the cat died.

There’s another adage that is relevant in Landry’s case: “Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.”

If you like stories with substance like the one below this post, please consider helping LouisianaVoice continue the kind of investigative stories we’ve featured here for the past 10 years.

We’re in the middle of our April fundraiser and I humbly ask those of you who have not been impacted by the pandemic to help support our efforts. We only do this twice a year, in April and September. We don’t have a huge budget but we do have expenses.

You can contribute by credit card by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post or you may mail a check to LouisianaVoice, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70726. With the crippling of the postal service by the current Postmaster General, I hope your contributions will arrive by the September fundraiser.

I have a new book coming out and anyone contributing $125 or more will received a signed copy. The book is featured below and I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s a true story about a murder that occurred in New Iberia 10 years ago about which many questions remain.

(The flyer above, which I did not write, is in error: Mrs. Chastant’s father did not work with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department; a retired State Trooper, he worked as a deputy in another parish.)

Remember, LouisianaVoice is a 501(c)(3) non-profit which means all contributions are fully tax-deductible.

As always, thank you for your continued support of LouisianaVoice.