10 Most Insane Prison Breaks Of All Time

Anyone who's seen the Leonardo Di Caprio movie Catch Me If You Can will know Frank Abagnale was a dab hand at impersonating pilots, doctors, and lawyers, but in real life, you can add prison inspectors to that list too.

That's how he escaped from the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta, Georgia when he was banged up there in 1971. With the help of an accomplice on the outside, he managed to convince the guards that he was an undercover inspector at the prison, rather than one of its inmates.

It helped, of course, that a US Marshal forgot to bring Abagnale's detention papers when he brought him to the facility, but after several weeks of constructing a watertight alibi, the con-man walked free unchallenged.

The prison guards he duped never saw him again and Abagnale was a free man for two months before he was arrested again in Washington and sent to a jail in Virginia.

These days, the reformed criminal advises the FBI on white-collar cases.