It sounds like the plot of a movie: “Catch Me if You Can,” the 2002 high-spirited Steven Spielberg thriller about a serial impostor named Frank Abagnale Jr., who managed to pass himself off as an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, while making millions of dollars forging checks. Or maybe something darker, like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 classic, “Shadow of a Doubt,” about a man wanted for murder who hides out with his sister’s family in a quiet California community where he charms the unsuspecting townsfolk.

Mark Schafer