ABSTRACT
Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. wore many masks. Throughout his life, he borrowed the names, experiences, and credentials of numerous people. He lived as a monk, a teacher, a zoology student, and posed as a variety of high-profile professionals including a religious psychologist, a dean of philosophy, and even a surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy. His exploits amass some of the most complex and successful identity hoaxes in history. It is the stuff movies are made of-literally. Demara’ s scams inspired the 1961 film The Great Imposter and more recently, Steven Spielberg’ s Catch Me If You Can (Biography.com Editors, 2016a).
