He was a Marine pilot for one afternoon. A psychiatrist for one hearing. A Catholic priest for five months. An orchestra conductor for eight minutes. Fred Brito never finished high school. Over four decades he ran a city planning department, managed hotels, raised disaster relief money for the Red Cross, absolved sins, and conducted a professional orchestra in front of a paying audience. He did all of it under names that belonged to nobody, with degrees he typed himself and references who were also him, in a different voice.
Twelve convictions never slowed him down. What finally caught up with him was the internet.
Borrowed Lives follows Brito from a supply depot in the Philippines to a border crossing in Arizona, where a fake priest with a real warrant talked his way past federal officers by inventing a twin brother on the spot. It is a short, fast, frequently funny true crime biography of a man who was good at almost every job he had no right to hold.
Based on court records, newspaper reporting, and Brito's own retellings. Around 90 minutes of reading.