‘Catch Me If You Can’ conman caught again

A NOTORIOUS confidence trickster dubbed the “Catch Me If You Can” conman is back in jail for again posing as a commercial pilot to rip off Queenslanders.

A NOTORIOUS confidence trickster dubbed the “Catch Me If You Can” conman is back in jail for again posing as a commercial pilot to rip off Queenslanders.

Barry John Faulkner, 68, of Paddington in Brisbane’s inner west, was convicted in Brisbane Magistrates Court on April 13 of multiple counts of fraud, ordered to repay his victims $6430 and sentenced to six months prison.

Faulkner has been in and out of prison his entire life with more than 80 convictions, mostly for fraud, and has adopted more than 50 aliases.

He has duped people around the nation by posing as a doctor, an Army officer, a Fedex courier, an American millionaire, an Olympic official, a CIA agent and the guitarist in the 1960s band The Monkees.

Fraudster Barry John Faulkner

He was dubbed the ‘‘Catch Me If You Can’’ conman because his scams mirrored those of the charming American criminal who was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in the 2002 film.

Many of his scams involving offering to sell people cut-price goods offered at special sales.

Last month he pleaded guilty to duping Burleigh B&B owner Vera Marie Panitsch on November 13, 2005, and was ordered to pay her $260 in restitution by Chief Magistrate, Ray Rinaudo.

Ms Panitsch told The Sunday Mail that Faulkner was carrying a shirt with a Qantas logo and a set of pilots wings when he offered to buy her a heavily discounted television at an exclusive sale for Qantas’s Brisbane staff.

Ms Panitsch said she regretted falling for his trick and said she had learned her lesson.

Brisbane woman Helen Wander Davis also lost $425 to Faulkner on the same day as Ms Panitsch.

Faulkner was also convicted of ripping off Brisbane man Bernard Baggetto on January 11, 2008, after Baggetto gave him $3500 in cash.

Faulkner in 1993

Faulkner posing as The Monkees’ Michael Nesmith in 1978

He was also convicted of “obtaining goods or credit by false pretense” after he got $200 from Richard Peter Scholten on July 30, 1996 at Airlie Beach.

Faulkner also pretended he was a pilot when he tried to pay his $120 bill at the Lukanda Motor Inn in Broadbeach by passing a valueless cheque on 15 June 1996.

And he admitted ripping off Gregory Roy White at Mermaid Beach over the Christmas period in 2012.

Faulkner was jailed in NSW in 2015 for promising people flight upgrades while dressed as an Emirates pilot.

He has previously posed as a pilot and taken cash for cheap duty-free products, and has masqueraded as an American pilot to convince a Caboolture motel owner that he was flying in an air show, and that his accommodation and food bill would be paid by the US air force.

In the late ‘60s when Faulkner was only 19, he pretended to be a doctor at Royal Brisbane Hospital and examined two pregnant women.

Barry John Faulkner’s latest scam was to pose as a commercial pilot.