‘Catch Me If You Can’ Con Man Barry John Faulkner Dies In Jail After 50-Year Criminal Career Posing As Pilots, A CIA Agent And A Pop Star

Barry John Faulkner was hoping someone would write a book about his life, but Australia’s most notorious con man didn’t even make the news when he died.

For more than 50 years, Faulkner posed as doctors, CIA agent, pop star and US military officers, while his most frequently assumed identity was that of a commercial airline pilot.

Since at least 2015, Faulkner had claimed to have done well, but he never abandoned his criminal ways and spent his final months crippled by illness in Sydney’s Long Bay Gaol.

On Monday, a coroner discovered that the 71-year-old man had died after going into cardiac arrest on January 25, 2020 in the Kevin Waller unit for the elderly and frail.

Faulkner had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, diabetes, asthma, deep vein thrombosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, epilepsy, depression, and anxiety.

He had suffered strokes, a hernia, shortness of breath, dizziness, seizures, paralysis on the left side of his body, headaches, slurred speech, and blackouts in the months before his death.

For someone whose criminal exploits were in the media spotlight for decades, Faulkner’s death went largely unnoticed and unreported at the time.

The closest Faulkner came to real fame was being compared to the title character in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, in which Leonard DiCaprio played a fake pilot.

During his shystering career, Faulkner was holed up in Victoria, Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, as well as New South Wales.

Claiming to have an IQ of 160, Faulkner appeared regularly on the television show Australia’s Most Wanted and was at one point the subject of warrants for his arrest in five states.

Since at least 2015, Faulkner (above) had claimed to have done well, but he never forsook his criminal ways, spending his final days crippled by illness in Sydney’s Long Bay Gaol.

He accumulated more than 80 convictions and died while awaiting trial on three counts for using a carriage service to access child pornography.

Daily Mail Australia interviewed Faulkner several times over the years, listening to his wacky stories and watching his physical decline.

Faulkner’s first known scam was in the late 1960s when at the age of 19 he introduced himself as a gynecologist at the Royal Brisbane Hospital and examined two pregnant women.

He later posed as a US Air Force and Marine Corps colonel, a photographer, a FedEx courier and an Olympic official, all for financial gain.

Perhaps his most audacious con was impersonating musician Mike Nesmith of The Monkees, an act that Faulkner claimed had even fooled music guru Molly Meldrum.

But Faulkner’s most common scam was promising benefits to unsuspecting travelers, such as cheap duty-free goods in exchange for cash, while pretending to be a pilot.

She told Daily Mail Australia that she chose the occupation as her favorite costume “because it’s glamorous.”

Faulkner’s bogus airline resume included flying every airliner up to the Boeing 777 and Airbus A380, and he had flown helicopter gunships during the Vietnam War.

Faulkner racked up more than 80 convictions and was scheduled to face a hearing in District Court on three counts of using a transportation service to access child pornography when he died.

He maintained that he knew Richard Branson from his imaginary days as chief pilot for the British billionaire’s Virgin airline.

In August 2015, he pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage through deception and possession of an identity to commit an indictable offense when he faced Sydney’s Waverley Local Court.

Police arrested Faulkner dressed in a fake pilot’s uniform with an Emirates photo ID at a cafe in the eastern suburbs after reports he was offering flight upgrades.

Faulkner strutted around a hotel bragging to managers about driving the A380, despite not even having a license to drive a car.

Outside court on that occasion, Faulkner told Daily Mail Australia that his arrest had been a mistake and that he was wearing the uniform because he was going to a costume party organized by Zoo Weekly magazine.

“I’m totally retired,” Faulkner said. ‘I have remorse for all the things I’ve done. I probably only have 18 months to live. I haven’t done anything since 2006.’

Despite his scruffy appearance in recent years, Faulkner said he had a lot of money “but I can’t access it because it’s the proceeds of crime.”

Faulkner posed as a pilot (left) for airlines including Emirates and Virgin Blue. He is pictured in 1978 posing as The Monkees guitarist/songwriter Mike Nesmith.

At the time, Faulkner said his biography would be a bestseller and blamed his career for letting people down because when he was young he was told he would never amount to much.

‘I wanted to prove them wrong, that I could do anything,” he said.

Faulkner claimed he was consulted by American con artist Frank Abagnale, whose autobiography became Catch Me If You Can, along with DiCaprio, who played him in the film.

Two years later, Faulkner again said that he would “retire” and settle down to “live a life within the law.”

By then, he was sharing a first-floor apartment with his girlfriend Louise in the infamous Northcott public housing block in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

“I was a pilot, I was in the CIA, I was a surgeon, I’ve been a lot of things,” he told Daily Mail Australia at the time.

‘It takes a lot of work, but I did it because people said it was impossible and it was exciting.

The closest Faulkner came to real fame was being compared to the title character in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, in which Leonard DiCaprio played a fake pilot.

“Nothing bothers me more than seeing a bullshit scam, someone who hasn’t put in the work but is getting away with it.”

Faulkner hoped that young men could learn from their mistakes and avoid a life of crime.

“They just don’t listen when you tell them what it’s going to cost them in the long run, that it’s not worth it,” he said.

The state’s deputy coroner, Derek Lee, heard the day Faulkner died that he had given his lunch of two sausage rolls to another inmate because he wasn’t hungry.

His cellmate called for help around 1:30 p.m. when he woke up to find Faulkner in bed making gurgling sounds. “Barry can’t breathe right, he’s having a fit,” the cellmate told prison officials.

Faulkner was taken from cell 14 to the unit’s medical clinic in a wheelchair, but went into cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead at 2:22 pm after CPR failed.

Assistant State Coroner Derek Lee found that Faulkner’s cause of death was heart disease, with chronic lung disease a contributing factor.

Faulkner’s sister spoke to the court by phone and thanked the paramedics and prison staff who cared for her brother in the last hour of his life.

“I think they did everything they could,” he said. “I would just like to say thank you for the care that was taken.”