Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zara Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: You know you know I'm just char dance and waiting
Speaker 2: for you as I do these days.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love a good shared dance. Listen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I do. I've been Christmas shopping for you and it's
Speaker 2: not easy to So I was looking up the James
Speaker 2: Gardner's daughter was mentioning a cookbook almost got for you.
Speaker 2: Then I was like, nah, she won't want this. It's
Speaker 2: called the Cop Cookbook, The Cop. Yeah, and so it's
Speaker 2: like it was about because you know, he played uh,
Speaker 2: obviously Rockford files Garner, and then before that he was
Speaker 2: also Philip Marlowe, so he'd played some detectives and then
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, so James Garner, you know, other than
Speaker 2: taking on Raymond Chandler's memorable character and then playing uh,
Speaker 2: the my favorite Jim Rockford. So they have this cake
Speaker 2: recipe and I was like, oh. It was like I
Speaker 2: was looking through it. I was like, what are they
Speaker 2: got in there? And so I wanted to tell him
Speaker 2: about this cake recipe. It's called Marlowe's Low Cholesterol Lemon Cake. Right,
Speaker 2: So in the description, this is not like this is
Speaker 2: older recipe books, so it's not like you get an
Speaker 2: essay before.
Speaker 3: You get the time a low cholesterol.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, late seventies case. So they have just like
Speaker 2: one sentence or two sentences to describe the cake before
Speaker 2: you get to the recipe, which is like old recipe
Speaker 2: so wonderful. So the sentences are these. This is our
Speaker 2: family's favorite cake, which was given to us by our
Speaker 2: friend Seanna Treebert. It's made for every birthday and holiday
Speaker 2: and it's always gone by morning, eaten by thieves in
Speaker 2: the night. So my favorite part though, this is where
Speaker 2: you get the low cholesterol. The first ingredient is non
Speaker 2: stick cooking spray. The second ingredient is all purpose flour.
Speaker 2: The third ingredient is one package of white cake mix. Wait,
Speaker 2: and then it's like you get some vegetable oil, some waters,
Speaker 2: mag whites, and vanilla extract, and then three ounce package
Speaker 2: of sugar free lemon gelatin.
Speaker 3: Stop. It is so Southern to use. I used to
Speaker 3: try and collect all these like church cookbooks, because there
Speaker 3: would have they would have stuff like this like Grandma's
Speaker 3: something cake. Get one box of chocolate cake. No no, no, no,
Speaker 3: But my all time favorite is. There was one recipe
Speaker 3: in a church cookbook that I got when I lived
Speaker 3: down in the South that was for Snicker biscuits.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds good and ingredients.
Speaker 3: You get one can of Pillsbury biscuits, like the kind
Speaker 3: where you have to like pop it over violently pop open,
Speaker 3: so you get those biscuits and then you get little
Speaker 3: bite sized Snickers. The individually wrapped is the other ingredient,
Speaker 3: and you shove it into the biscuit. Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: wrap like the biscuit around it and bacon.
Speaker 2: That's the recipe.
Speaker 3: That's the recipes I came up with a Snicker biscuits.
Speaker 2: Those are my favorite stoner Snickers biscuits.
Speaker 3: What you need to doms you can't even forget it.
Speaker 3: It was the crat Snicker biscuits.
Speaker 2: So Grandma, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: But any of these like family recipes that call for
Speaker 3: box cake, Thick's amazing. And you know what, they are ridiculous?
Speaker 2: You know it.
Speaker 3: Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 3: Stealing for stealing's sake? Oh oh, this is Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Hie cons. It's
Speaker 3: always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am.
Speaker 2: Books, Elizabeth Books. I love books, books, books, McGee.
Speaker 3: How many books do you think you own?
Speaker 2: Hundreds and bordering into the low thousands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, i'd say so. I don't have that many physical
Speaker 3: copy books in my possession right now, Like I'd say
Speaker 3: I probably have maybe around one hundred or so. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 3: most of my are stored at my mom's house.
Speaker 2: How many do you have there?
Speaker 3: Well, her collection is like in the thousands. Yeah, i'd
Speaker 3: probably go up to like fifteen hundred or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she has a full library in the house. She means business.
Speaker 3: I think it's safe to say that she reads like
Speaker 3: four books a month.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, I have a ton of books on my kindle.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I checked earlier today. I can't read off
Speaker 3: nine hundred and seventy three damn my library. But I've
Speaker 3: recently moved over to audible.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So, because I have to wear glasses now both distance
Speaker 3: and reading, and I'm miserable, so I like to visually
Speaker 3: raw dog the world old. So I don't usually wear
Speaker 3: my glasses at all, and the only time I always
Speaker 3: wear them is when I'm driving.
Speaker 2: Huh, well that's least responsible of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or it's like I have to read more than
Speaker 3: like a paragraph. You put them on, I snap on
Speaker 3: the specs because I'm so old anyway, I don't like
Speaker 3: to do that. So I started listening to books.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, that's why.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I only have eighty four books on my audible
Speaker 3: library right now.
Speaker 2: I can't read books off of kindles, and I cannot
Speaker 2: listen to books on Audible because I won't remember what
Speaker 2: I hear. I have to like read them so I
Speaker 2: can create. It is a problem. It is I can't
Speaker 2: read where I'm not flipping pages. For some reason, I
Speaker 2: really need the tactile feel.
Speaker 3: Okay, I like the did I resisted the Kindle went
Speaker 3: to it actually really liked it. And then I'm trying
Speaker 3: to get into audible.
Speaker 2: But how's it working for you?
Speaker 3: I love it, but I do miss reading like actually
Speaker 3: looking at I should probably put my glasses.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the stories with the same vivid No,
Speaker 2: that was quick.
Speaker 3: But then, and I also don't remember the stories that
Speaker 3: I read on hard.
Speaker 2: I don't remember anything anymore.
Speaker 3: No, I remember who are you? So what's my point?
Speaker 3: My point? Is that we love books. We both love
Speaker 3: we've both written books. It's true, yep books. I told
Speaker 3: you stories about book.
Speaker 2: Criminals before you have I have a book.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do it again today. Son. Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: have a book thief. But he's unusual, so I usually
Speaker 3: I actually don't think there's a typical book thief.
Speaker 2: I was wondering about that.
Speaker 3: They're a weird lot, but this guy is even outside
Speaker 3: of that to some extent. He's kind of like our
Speaker 3: man John Gilkey, who was pursued by biblio Dick Ken Sanders.
Speaker 3: This guy he wasn't into the thefts as a means
Speaker 3: of enriching his bank account.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he wasn't going for high dollar.
Speaker 3: Books, and he didn't do it for the money.
Speaker 2: Looking for delicious books. Is he like eating them?
Speaker 3: No, he did it for the love of books.
Speaker 2: No, m giving the game.
Speaker 3: But he didn't do it in the way that Guilkey
Speaker 3: did it because remember, like Guilkey wanted rarities, first editions,
Speaker 3: and he wanted to build like this impressive library, so
Speaker 3: something that someone important would have, like someone accomplished. The
Speaker 3: guy I'm going to tell you about today. He also
Speaker 3: stole books, but He didn't do it to sell them
Speaker 3: and make money. It was for the love of the books,
Speaker 3: but also for what they meant, And in his case,
Speaker 3: it wasn't the glamour or the power of a fine library.
Speaker 3: It was the symbol of access. Oh so I'm curious,
Speaker 3: zaren close your eyes. No, I'm not messing. You really
Speaker 3: are close them. I want you to picture it.
Speaker 2: Don't yell it.
Speaker 3: It's January fifth, twenty twenty two. You are a customs
Speaker 3: agent at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
Speaker 3: Before you is a long line of travelers eager to
Speaker 3: get their passport stamped, passed through your kiosk, and head
Speaker 3: out into the US of A. Some chat with each other,
Speaker 3: All of them seemed exhausted from their travels and flummixed
Speaker 3: by the long line ahead of them. Some looked longingly
Speaker 3: over at the global entry area. No line, just the
Speaker 3: occasional traveler breezing through with no asshole. The airport speaker's
Speaker 3: broadcast announcements in a calm tone, calm yet unintelligible. A
Speaker 3: baby cries at the far end of the line, and
Speaker 3: in a silence, with gentle whispers from his mother. You
Speaker 3: look at the line in front of you, a woman
Speaker 3: with a messy updo, a chic yet casual outfit and
Speaker 3: a roller suitcases up next. You raise your hand to
Speaker 3: waver forward, and she approaches your counter. You run through
Speaker 3: your usual questions. What is the purpose of your visit tourism?
Speaker 3: I'm actually here to go shopping. How long will you
Speaker 3: be staying? Ten days, she tells you. Where will you
Speaker 3: be staying at the Ace hotel? You look down at
Speaker 3: a British passport. Do you have anything to declare? Not
Speaker 3: a thing?
Speaker 1: Love?
Speaker 3: She says? What do you do for a living? I'm
Speaker 3: an interior designa, she says, with a smile. Have you
Speaker 3: been to the US before? Many times? She says, I
Speaker 3: love it here. You stay up for passport and wave
Speaker 3: her through. She thanks you and heads out to the
Speaker 3: waiting city. You look up and see the next man
Speaker 3: in line. You look down at the portion of your
Speaker 3: desk that runs under the counter out of you with
Speaker 3: the travelers, there are a few photos of people for
Speaker 3: whom you are to be on the lookout. You compare
Speaker 3: one of the photos to the man standing in line.
Speaker 3: That's him. You press a button on the corner of
Speaker 3: your desk and then wave the man forward. He approaches
Speaker 3: your desk and slides his passport to you europe Republic Passaporto.
Speaker 3: You flip it open, Filippo Bernardini. You look him in
Speaker 3: the eye. He seems calm. You clear your throat, and
Speaker 3: you're about to ask him the purpose of his visit
Speaker 3: when he is suddenly flanked by FBI agents. They quietly
Speaker 3: tell him to take his passport come with them. So wait, zaren,
Speaker 3: that's the climax of the story.
Speaker 2: I gave it away, yes, wondering, I let you know.
Speaker 3: The story before everyone else got a chance. Actually, I
Speaker 3: was using a literary tech.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 3: I have a degree in this? There and mess with me.
Speaker 3: I know what I'm doing. Let's go back to the beginning. Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm already gripped, so Filippo Bernardini.
Speaker 2: Yes, Philip Phil, Hey, phil phil Phil.
Speaker 3: He grew up in Italy, m surprise. He was a
Speaker 3: lonely child. He was shy with drawn. Books were a
Speaker 3: refuge for him, so they gave him companionships, structure, meaning
Speaker 3: and reading friends. Friends. Reading wasn't just a hobby, it
Speaker 3: was how he learned to feel connected to something larger
Speaker 3: than himself.
Speaker 2: Aimes be like, you know, the cigar rollers in Cuba.
Speaker 2: He gets paid to read stories, like maybe he had
Speaker 2: like a grandfather who's like, I give him a couple
Speaker 2: of quarters, he reads me a book. Yeah, for his
Speaker 2: job as a child.
Speaker 3: For them, I mean, I get it. I was a
Speaker 3: child bookworm because books were often far more interesting than
Speaker 3: my peers.
Speaker 2: Oh you know I read yeah a kid. I used
Speaker 2: to a lot of pizza in the reading context.
Speaker 3: Exactly Slade. So this attachment to books shaped his ambitions.
Speaker 3: So he pursued education and work that would like put
Speaker 3: him near literature, not as a writer or creator, just
Speaker 3: someone like in proximity to it all in the reflected glory.
Speaker 3: He wanted access. He wanted to be part of the
Speaker 3: world that books came from before they reached the public.
Speaker 3: So on LinkedIn, he said he had a quote obsession
Speaker 3: for the written word in languages, and according to his
Speaker 3: profile on there, he got his bachelor's in Chinese language
Speaker 3: from the University in Milan. He said he also served
Speaker 3: as the Italian translator for the Chinese comic book author
Speaker 3: Rau Pingrew's memoir Our Story. He then got a master's
Speaker 3: in publishing from University College London and on the site
Speaker 3: he said his passion was ensuring quote books can be
Speaker 3: read and enjoyed all over the world and in multiple languages.
Speaker 3: This is so true, they really can't.
Speaker 2: It's a great thing about books.
Speaker 3: The thing about books read can be read all over
Speaker 3: the world. So by the early to mid like twenty
Speaker 3: tens of twenty teens, he had he got a job
Speaker 3: in the publishing industry in the UK. He worked as
Speaker 3: a rights coordinator for the British branch of Simon and Schuster.
Speaker 3: It's a big, big publisher. His role put him inside
Speaker 3: like a legitimate corporate structure, gave him daily exposure to
Speaker 3: the mechanics of global publishing.
Speaker 2: He's looking at all those arcs and manuscripts at the published.
Speaker 3: Yes, so a rights coordinator is not like a junior assistant,
Speaker 3: but it's also not central to editorial decision making. So
Speaker 3: it means like managing foreign rights communications. He would track
Speaker 3: licensing agreements, coordinate with all like international partners, had to
Speaker 3: have like a really good attention to detail, discretion, and
Speaker 3: like constant email correspondence with agents, editors and rights professionals.
Speaker 3: So it provided visibility into the movement of manuscripts without
Speaker 3: granting authority or access to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not changing any words, right.
Speaker 3: So basically he was positioned at the edge of the
Speaker 3: manuscript pipeline. He's talking about manuscripts, but he's not actually
Speaker 3: seeing them. He could see when books were being discussed, shopped,
Speaker 3: prepared for foreign sales. He can see the names of editors, agents,
Speaker 3: scouts who were like exchanging early drafts, but he wasn't
Speaker 3: in those exchanges. So over time he starts to feel
Speaker 3: really excluded, and he's like, this is even more than
Speaker 3: just like professional hierarchy. This is a personal slight soelt
Speaker 3: he felt invisible, he felt undervalued. Zerum he believed that
Speaker 3: access to manuscripts represented belonging itself. So without it, he's like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm not really a part of publishing.
Speaker 3: I'm just on the And so he's like, you know what,
Speaker 3: I want to check that right now. If you're in
Speaker 3: this position, how would you change that?
Speaker 2: Get a new job, could work in a bookstore, I
Speaker 2: don't know what would you do?
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of publishing is who you know.
Speaker 2: Definitely, and also how many followers.
Speaker 3: Do you have on Well, there's that, like there's some
Speaker 3: some people are able to make their way in the
Speaker 3: in the industry through like sheer displays of talent and acumen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's getting refer and uer for most of its network.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like that's honestly so much it's how
Speaker 3: people get ahead. I mean, I know that's true of
Speaker 3: a lot of industries, but I am blown away by
Speaker 3: how outsized that is when it comes to publishing.
Speaker 2: Well, so it's much like Hollywood. They're more and more
Speaker 2: risk averse, more and more being counters have gotten involved,
Speaker 2: and now they want to have a book that's going
Speaker 2: to sell really well the first month, and you don't
Speaker 2: get like what's come girl with her book Conto that's
Speaker 2: sold like nineteen hundred copies after they pushed out of it.
Speaker 3: So whoever, it's such a cancer.
Speaker 2: Right, whoever signed Olivia Notzi her contract for that book,
Speaker 2: their whole career he's got foreshortened because some people don't
Speaker 2: want that. They don't want to be the one who
Speaker 2: brought Tanto to the.
Speaker 3: Market exactly exactly. So like here you've got Bernadini right,
Speaker 3: like he he's a guy who loves books, but he
Speaker 3: doesn't come from like a literary family with connections. He
Speaker 3: doesn't have school connections, because that's what I found is
Speaker 3: another thing like that makes a big difference in the
Speaker 3: publishing induto. And he's not like a hustler in terms
Speaker 3: of schmoozing and getting to know all the right people
Speaker 3: and positioning himself to move up the ladder.
Speaker 2: And then he doesn't have like the Italian equivalent of
Speaker 2: the University of Iowa's like workshops.
Speaker 3: It's like exactly, oh my gosh, exactly. But he wants more,
Speaker 3: and so he came up with a plan. He was
Speaker 3: gonna be sneaky. He was going to fool people.
Speaker 2: I'm listening, He's going to.
Speaker 3: Get what he wanted. Go for access. Let's take a break,
Speaker 3: we come back access Zaren, Elizabeth Saren, Philippe Berndi great name.
Speaker 3: But Phil Bernandi, Phil Barry, Phil Bernie, Bernie, Phil burn
Speaker 3: Burns unlikely criminal very much. So here he is here,
Speaker 3: he is Phil working and publishing, which had been his dream.
Speaker 3: But once he's in it, he looks around, He's like, wait,
Speaker 3: I'm still an outsider. How did this happen? He didn't
Speaker 3: get to have his finger on the pulse of the industry.
Speaker 3: He didn't get to see the books as they were
Speaker 3: ushered through the process from hand to hardback.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a cog far from the action.
Speaker 3: Yes, everyone around him knew about the big hits way
Speaker 3: before they went to the stores. They'd already read them.
Speaker 3: They were miles ahead. He wanted that. So instead of
Speaker 3: using his crafty brain to maneuver himself into the area
Speaker 3: of publishing where he.
Speaker 2: Could be that guy, Yeah it would be possible.
Speaker 3: No, he tried something else. Around August of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: he started constructing this like multi year scheme. He was
Speaker 3: going to steal manuscripts, and not like in a cool
Speaker 3: Nicholas cageway. No, he was stealing the books before they
Speaker 3: became real books. He didn't want to steal the stories
Speaker 3: or like shop him as his own. He wasn't going
Speaker 3: to sell them. He just wanted to get his hands
Speaker 3: on the currency of his dream industry. He just wanted
Speaker 3: to feel the books, not even feel the digitals.
Speaker 2: Not even getting like he's got the scent of new paper.
Speaker 3: So basically he came up with like a multi layered
Speaker 3: cyber impersonation campaign.
Speaker 2: Phil.
Speaker 3: He built it to exploit weaknesses in the publishing world's
Speaker 3: very informal practices. So the publishing industry relies really heavily
Speaker 3: on email. Communication is real between authors, agents, editors, and scouts,
Speaker 3: and so pre publication manuscripts are typically circulated by like
Speaker 3: trusted individuals, but they are not elaborate security protocols.
Speaker 2: No, they're attachments and emails exactly.
Speaker 3: Hopefully a PDF, sometimes a word doc. So Bernardini built
Speaker 3: his own infrastructure that mimicked this trust network. So first
Speaker 3: we're spoofed domains. He registered domains that were nearly identical
Speaker 3: to actual publishers and literary agencies. His techniques fell into
Speaker 3: three major categories. First was character substitution. So let's say
Speaker 3: the actual website is, you know, realdomain dot com, right,
Speaker 3: so heat registered real door nain dot com. So making
Speaker 3: instead of having M use RN so it looks with
Speaker 3: bad Kurning or whatever, quick reading or r EAI domains,
Speaker 3: so instead of an L, put a lowercase I. The
Speaker 3: most common substitutions were M became RN, RN became M
Speaker 3: was his zero AE, that kind of stuff, so really
Speaker 3: subtle changes that bypassed casual visual scrutiny, and we're like
Speaker 3: really effective because most people don't look at email headers.
Speaker 3: You just skim it or you see their name and
Speaker 3: then like it's you know, peripherally.
Speaker 2: Oh and also if you're doing like typos, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: notice if he had one that's just one letter away
Speaker 2: on the on the.
Speaker 3: Keyboard, right exactly. So so that's where the emails are
Speaker 3: coming from. These these websites that have you know, these
Speaker 3: these domain names. Then there was top level domain variations.
Speaker 3: So let's say that the legitimate website is publishername dot com.
Speaker 3: The spoof is publisher name dot co or org or US.
Speaker 3: Sometimes he would add or remove a country code to
Speaker 3: like mimic multinational imprints. And then the third thing was hyphenation.
Speaker 3: So let's say that you had a literary agency, the
Speaker 3: Burnett Agency, okay, and your website is Burnett Agency dot com. Right,
Speaker 3: Bernardini would register Burnette hyphenagency dot com or agency hyphen
Speaker 3: Burnett dot com or like the Burnet Agency, right and
Speaker 3: like but putting these hyphens in, and so it would
Speaker 3: like mimic these naming styles used across international publishing. He
Speaker 3: made fake sites that looked plausible even to industry insiders.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So with the fake sites came fake email accounts.
Speaker 3: He configured email accounts under real employee names. So a
Speaker 3: lot of the spoofed emails contained copied signatures and formatting
Speaker 3: that he took from legitimate correspondence. Okay, and then he
Speaker 3: timed requests to coincide with like natural publishing workflows, so
Speaker 3: like right before the Frankfurt or London book fairs. So
Speaker 3: manuscript exchanges are increasing, Totally, a lot of authors and
Speaker 3: agents expect manuscripts to be sent around constantly, and so
Speaker 3: these emails they don't raise suspicions.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 3: So who's the targeting's errant.
Speaker 2: And also who's really good? Who in the criminals sense
Speaker 2: of things. Yeah, you would not think criminals would be
Speaker 2: doing this, So it just so beneath the page.
Speaker 3: Your everyday work, you don't think twice about these things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the targets, right, He's focusing on individuals who control
Speaker 3: unpublished content. In that literary pipeline, authors were the main one, well,
Speaker 3: especially those with like upcoming high profile releases, so debut
Speaker 3: authors also they're more likely to quickly cooperate with requests
Speaker 3: from industry professionals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't know it's a standard or totally.
Speaker 3: I guess I got to send it again to this
Speaker 3: guy so like they fell for it. He'd usually contact
Speaker 3: authors directly with like this urgent or super friendly tone,
Speaker 3: like hey, can you send me the latest draft for
Speaker 3: evaluation purposes, like just really quickly. So then we got
Speaker 3: the agents. Okay, agents are always sharing manuscripts with scouts
Speaker 3: and editors, so he exploited it by impersonating scouts or
Speaker 3: editors requesting material from agents, and they would love to comply,
Speaker 3: Oh totally, And they've got such a high volume of
Speaker 3: email that they get, so they're just like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: let me just clear this send it off. Plus as
Speaker 3: you're saying like, oh yeah, I want to sell this thing,
Speaker 3: and a lot of agents work with international scouts, like
Speaker 3: on a daily basis, and so they're constantly forwarding stuff
Speaker 3: to maintain deal momentum. So then you know they were
Speaker 3: Obviously we'd have the editors coming in there. They're exchanging
Speaker 3: manuscripts with colleagues and with translators, and he impersonated both.
Speaker 3: So editors were targets because they have access to the
Speaker 3: earliest version of major works, and they share drafts widely
Speaker 3: for acquisitions or foreign rights, and they're really used to
Speaker 3: getting like dozens of manuscript requests during peak publication periods
Speaker 3: they get overwhelmed. And then lastly, we have the literary scouts.
Speaker 3: So these are people they work between agents and publishers
Speaker 3: to identify promising books, and they maintain these databases of
Speaker 3: pre publication intelligence. So Bernardini's most sophisticated attacks involved Scouts
Speaker 3: because the scouts held confidential project lists. That's what he
Speaker 3: wanted an access to. So they're the keepers of the coolness,
Speaker 3: like as far as he's concerned, literal gatekeepers exactly. They
Speaker 3: track international deals, translation rights, and he found that their
Speaker 3: staff tend to reuse similar passwords across company systems and
Speaker 3: like that's all offices really, but like he noticed in particular,
Speaker 3: so this is the group whose credentials he successfully phished
Speaker 3: using a fake site, Like he unlocked access to internal
Speaker 3: communication archives. So from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen he
Speaker 3: expanded his operation. He was really methodical about it. He
Speaker 3: registered dozens of spoofed domains and it just kept growing
Speaker 3: and growing until he had more than one hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty websites. Each one was impersonating a legitimate organization, that's incredible,
Speaker 3: and each email impersonated a real person and like manuscripts
Speaker 3: are just flowing in draft novels, non fiction proposals, early
Speaker 3: versions of books that would later become major releases.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine his like organizational stuff on his computer.
Speaker 2: He has all this wrapped out, like the files.
Speaker 3: He would download all of it and store them privately,
Speaker 3: like on his home computer. Didn't steal them, but there's
Speaker 3: no evidence he never shared them with anyone else. He
Speaker 3: did nothing with them beyond possession. He didn't try and
Speaker 3: sell them, He didn't upload them anywhere, did not try
Speaker 3: and like exploit the market value. He wasn't trying to
Speaker 3: pirate them. Yeah, he just wanted to have this, stole
Speaker 3: them to steal them. So who did he target?
Speaker 2: Who are the writers he liked, not like you know,
Speaker 2: what do you call grocery store authors like Scott Trow.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they're like the government hasn't released like a
Speaker 3: full list of victims, but there are some that we
Speaker 3: do know that he got. So Margaret Atwood really she
Speaker 3: publicly confirmed that a manuscript of hers had been stolen
Speaker 3: by him. It was the draft for The Testaments, which
Speaker 3: is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. Okay, and at
Speaker 3: the time it's you know, obviously unpublished. She later wrote
Speaker 3: about the experience, and she described it as deeply unsettling,
Speaker 3: and she emphasized, well, she said the theft wasn't just
Speaker 3: like technical, but personal, and she said early drafts are
Speaker 3: private and vulnerable. Oh yeah, And so knowing that like
Speaker 3: an unknown individual out there and unsubbed had obtained one
Speaker 3: really distressed her, even though like the manuscript was never
Speaker 3: leaked beyond him. There's this writer, James Hannahem. He told
Speaker 3: The New York Times, quote, you feel violated. I don't
Speaker 3: want anyone to know how bad the early drafts of
Speaker 3: things are.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, writers pride you think about it.
Speaker 3: Think about early draft when you're like I just barfed
Speaker 3: this out here and I haven't tinkered with it.
Speaker 2: I want someone to kind of tell me how the
Speaker 2: flow is.
Speaker 3: And you look back at it. Oh my god, I
Speaker 3: get published totally, totally. So other titles scammed such a
Speaker 3: fun Age by Kylie Read, the Sign for Home by Fell,
Speaker 3: A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke, Wow, and
Speaker 3: Hush by Dylan Farrow.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there were unsuccessful attempts.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of them.
Speaker 3: In fact, he was swinging for the fences with one
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen. So March first, twenty seventeen, this book
Speaker 3: publisher in Sweden gets a weird email A colleague in
Speaker 3: Venice vints. Yeah, wanted access to a top secret document.
Speaker 3: It was the unpublished manuscript of the fifth book in
Speaker 3: Steve Larsen's Millennium series.
Speaker 2: I was a gun, a guest said Sweden.
Speaker 3: I figured, so, you know, those are the ones about
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon tattoo. Those books
Speaker 3: have sold more than one hundred million copies.
Speaker 2: World where they were huge. But then that was when
Speaker 2: he was still like, people were going, is there going
Speaker 2: to be another book?
Speaker 3: Well, no, this is because it's the fifth, right, So
Speaker 3: Steve Larson he passed away after the first three. Yeah,
Speaker 3: at this point, yeah, and then there's this other Swedish author,
Speaker 3: David lagger Crowns. He continued the series if.
Speaker 2: He had notes in it, everything for it.
Speaker 3: Right, the fifth book, The Man who Chased His Shadow,
Speaker 3: was going to like expected to be a blockbuster. It's
Speaker 3: gonna be huge, and everyone was trying to keep a
Speaker 3: lid on it. The author lager Kronz. He wrote his
Speaker 3: first extension of the series, the book four, on a
Speaker 3: computer that wasn't even hooked up to the Internet. Because
Speaker 3: remember there was so much secrecy around the whole series.
Speaker 3: He printed every well, there were all these conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: after Larsen died.
Speaker 2: And behind how much is this going to be actually
Speaker 2: his book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this lager Crowns he printed everything out and
Speaker 3: delivered it by hand to the publisher and it felt
Speaker 3: a little excessive for the fifth book. They're like, you
Speaker 3: know what I think, Like, you know, we can probably
Speaker 3: figure something out, like for the love of God, dude, right,
Speaker 3: So the publisher was like, there has to be a
Speaker 3: secure digital way to do this, so they asked around.
Speaker 3: They found out about hush mail, which is an encrypted
Speaker 3: email service and it has like two factor authentication.
Speaker 2: A disappearing email.
Speaker 3: No everyone involved has to sign an NDA. So this
Speaker 3: weird email from the lady in Venice, Francesca Varoto. She's
Speaker 3: an Italian edition editor, so she supposedly wrote to the
Speaker 3: publisher Darre, Linda and Catherine. I hope you're well. Could
Speaker 3: you please resend me the link to the manuscript of
Speaker 3: the Man who Chased His Shadow. Thank you best, Francesca.
Speaker 3: So then like the literary agent for this got basically
Speaker 3: the same message, which is, this is crazy. How could
Speaker 3: someone lose the link for something so important? It be
Speaker 3: so flippant about it. It sounds like a Valley Girl
Speaker 3: when she's in Venice, Italy. So like, while everyone's thinking
Speaker 3: like that's kind of weird, she emails again and was like,
Speaker 3: I need new log in credentials. It's not that I
Speaker 3: don't even have the link, Like I think my mind
Speaker 3: has expired. So can you just give me a new
Speaker 3: log in?
Speaker 2: I've lost everything.
Speaker 3: So another employee at the publisher sent an email asking
Speaker 3: if everything's okay, just like a fresh email, not responding
Speaker 3: to the chain. Phone immediately rings. It's yeah, She's like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? I have not sent you
Speaker 3: anything and I did not lose my login. So everyone
Speaker 3: goes back to the original weird emails, and Varoto noticed
Speaker 3: that the signature on the fake email had her old
Speaker 3: job title on it.
Speaker 2: I was wondering also if she had like an old
Speaker 2: signature where it's like I don't even use that quote anymore.
Speaker 3: The quotes and the signatures goupless, Why I feel so inspired? No,
Speaker 3: it was like she had gotten a promotion like two
Speaker 3: months prior, and so they you know, it was like
Speaker 3: the subject line also misspelled the name of her company,
Speaker 3: a little problem there, and the domain on the email
Speaker 3: address was wrong Instead of dot it at the end
Speaker 3: for Italy, it was dot com. So they all got
Speaker 3: nervous that maybe the emails had like a trojan horse
Speaker 3: in them or something, so they deleted them, and then
Speaker 3: Veroto's IT guys they found that the fake dot com
Speaker 3: domain had been created the day before, and it was
Speaker 3: registered to an address in Amsterdam and had this Dutch
Speaker 3: phone number. One of the IT guys calls it and
Speaker 3: it goes straight to voicemail. Thank you for calling IBM.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, which I would just be like, okay, this
Speaker 3: is some girl with the dragon tattoo stuff. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: I'd be, you know, freaking out.
Speaker 2: I'm dealing with packers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Everyone involved in the book felt like they were suddenly
Speaker 3: under attack, Like how else would this person try and
Speaker 3: infiltrate their systems to get their hands on the manuscript?
Speaker 2: North Korea?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they're does like red siren lights or you know,
Speaker 3: they're running and like close the doors, close the blinds.
Speaker 3: This is going to ruin the whole book, release, the
Speaker 3: world tour. But nothing else what tour the world tour,
Speaker 3: but nothing else happened. Manuscript wasn't leaked, the book came
Speaker 3: out as planned. So in July of TWI though, like Bernardini,
Speaker 3: he's like, I gotta up my game. He escalates his methods.
Speaker 3: He created a fake website that replicated the log in
Speaker 3: portal of a real literary scouting firm. The design was
Speaker 3: like identical.
Speaker 2: You think he can take these skills and get a
Speaker 2: new job, one.
Speaker 3: Would think, one would think. So he sent emails like
Speaker 3: directing employees to log in, and he captured their credentials
Speaker 3: in the process, and then about like twenty users entered
Speaker 3: their usernames and passwords.
Speaker 2: So he did like a phishing campaign.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like please log into the website and they're like okay,
Speaker 3: you go. So now he's got the credentials, he gets
Speaker 3: unauthorized access to all these internal databases that had confidential
Speaker 3: industry information, so like manuscript tracking grids, all the acquisition notes,
Speaker 3: internal correspondence, and then all the attachments and so this
Speaker 3: let him see which manuscripts were circulating, who had access,
Speaker 3: where they were heading next. So he uses all this
Speaker 3: information and he starts sending emails that referenced specific projects
Speaker 3: or submission stages or like the editorial conversations. So he's
Speaker 3: impersonating colleagues with like incredible accuracy, and he's referencing information
Speaker 3: that only insiders would know. He's no longer guessing it stuff,
Speaker 3: and so he's navigating this ecosystem from within. Still, no
Speaker 3: manuscripts are leaked, and so this phase like accounts for
Speaker 3: a large portion of the stolen manuscripts. This is when
Speaker 3: he's just like he's like threw the net out into
Speaker 3: the fish ridge water.
Speaker 2: Very specific one too, and prosecutors later.
Speaker 3: Estimated the number that he pinched at more than a thousand. Damn, Sean,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of books, myan, dude, let's stop and
Speaker 3: think about that. I want you to think about it, Zaren.
Speaker 3: And when we return, we're going to go to the airport, Zaren.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Zavin, are you reading a book right now?
Speaker 2: Yes, so good. That's what I was. I was flipping
Speaker 2: through a book. You can see here in my hands.
Speaker 3: The book I'm reading is that Daniel Steele. So we've
Speaker 3: got Philippo Bernetti really putting you know, the heat on
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 2: That was good. He's putting a lot English on that
Speaker 2: Italian name.
Speaker 3: Phil Burnos. He's a book nerd extraordinaire.
Speaker 2: Have you on the extraordinary?
Speaker 3: This is a guy who wants to know all the
Speaker 3: spoilers parents right, like he's doing so.
Speaker 2: Much, so much worse, such a little payoff. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: I hope he was giving him the feeling he wanted
Speaker 2: to think.
Speaker 3: So by twenty twenty, there were like subtle signs of
Speaker 3: the fraud that's surfacing, Like some authors and agents started
Speaker 3: to notice the unusual email variations and like messages that
Speaker 3: you know came from familiar people but like slightly altered addresses,
Speaker 3: and like sometimes they get the same request twice from
Speaker 3: like nearly identical senders.
Speaker 2: So or like maybe they're dealing with that editor and
Speaker 2: some other recent exchange.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then all of a sudden, it's like, wait,
Speaker 3: we just talked. So in late twenty twenty, Publisher's Marketplace
Speaker 3: announced that Little Brown would be publishing a novel called
Speaker 3: re Entry, and it was written by James Hannaham, who
Speaker 3: I quoted earlier. It was about a transgender woman paroled
Speaker 3: from a men's prison, and the editor for the book
Speaker 3: was announced as Ben George So. Two days after this
Speaker 3: announcement comes out in publisher's marketplace. Hannaham gets an email
Speaker 3: from the editor Ben George. The editor is asking for
Speaker 3: the latest draft of the manuscript, so hannahem. He has
Speaker 3: a website and on it is an email contact link,
Speaker 3: and that's where the email went, not to his usual account,
Speaker 3: so he didn't think anything of it. He just opened
Speaker 3: his regular email account and sent off the docum. Then
Speaker 3: his phone rings, it's the editor. He's like, I didn't
Speaker 3: send you any email asking for this. So like everyone's
Speaker 3: starting to get like they're whispering about this. It's because
Speaker 3: weird things are happening. Penguin, Random House and Simon and
Speaker 3: Schuster his own employer, two of the biggest publishers. They
Speaker 3: sent out warnings about the scam to staff, so he
Speaker 3: had to have gotten that email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they can.
Speaker 3: See that there's like this fraud store at work, but
Speaker 3: they can't figure out exactly who they are, like what
Speaker 3: they want why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also nothing's ever coming out. There's no damage
Speaker 2: being done to the authors or the companies.
Speaker 3: That's so according to Reeves Wideman.
Speaker 2: And this is also before like AI stuff, so you
Speaker 2: wouldn't be like saying they're worried that they're using this
Speaker 2: to train their large language.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, exactly this New York Magazine article quote. Some
Speaker 3: in publishing were beginning to question whether manuscripts were even
Speaker 3: the end goal. How else to explain why the thief
Speaker 3: would want sample pages of Bong June Ho's Parasite Storyboards
Speaker 3: and a ten page book proposal for Michael J. Fox Memoir.
Speaker 3: After a rights manager in Germany got hit, she speculated
Speaker 3: that a security company was stress testing publishers in the
Speaker 3: hopes of later selling them protective software.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting theory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, several friends I spoke to who considered themselves the
Speaker 3: good kind of hackers, so this sounded like a Cybergang's
Speaker 3: training program. The stakes were low, the targets weren't especially
Speaker 3: tech savvy, and there was a deliverable target, the manuscript
Speaker 3: that a new recruit could bring home before moving on
Speaker 3: to stealing login credentials from employees at a nuclear reactor.
Speaker 3: In the wake of North Korea's alleged leaking of emails
Speaker 3: from Sony Pictures, could this be another attempt to destabilize
Speaker 3: Western culture? Dramatic perhaps, but then again, I had found
Speaker 3: nearly two hundred companies in more than thirty countries that
Speaker 3: the thief had impersonated, and none of them was Russian. Damn.
Speaker 3: So it's just it's so widespread.
Speaker 2: That's a really big nets two hundred companies, yes countries.
Speaker 3: So then the story hits the New York Times in
Speaker 3: December of twenty twenty. They wrote, quote, whoever the thief is,
Speaker 3: he or she knows how publishing works and has mapped
Speaker 3: out the connections between authors and the constellation of agents,
Speaker 3: publishers and editors who would have access to their material.
Speaker 3: This person understands the path a manuscript takes to go
Speaker 3: from submission to publication, and it is at ease with
Speaker 3: insider LINGO like MS instead of manuscript like. Okay, that's
Speaker 3: not the hardest thing to dot. That's gotta be an
Speaker 3: inside jo. So no one understood the scope or the
Speaker 3: source of the activity. There's no obvious pattern that points
Speaker 3: to a single purp. It just seemed weird. Behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: cybersecurity teams started tracing suspicious domains and like patterns emerged.
Speaker 3: Domain registrations were clustered together, the hosting details overlapped and
Speaker 3: phishing incidences were linked to the same infrastructure, so the
Speaker 3: Feds come in, they start investigating, and by late twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one they had a suspect. So Bernardini. He lands
Speaker 3: at JFK Airport January of twenty twenty two. Federal agents
Speaker 3: arrest him. Immediately. You were there, you were getting ready
Speaker 3: to remember the passport. The Department of Justice charged him
Speaker 3: with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and then they
Speaker 3: laid out this like six year campaign of impersonation and
Speaker 3: unauthorized access. The publishing industry was just stunned, in part
Speaker 3: because like everyone had their own pet theory, and Bernardini
Speaker 3: fit none of them.
Speaker 2: Nobody was even closed, no one.
Speaker 3: Was even remotely close. A lot of folks thoughts, since
Speaker 3: they knew detective novels and thrillers, that they would for
Speaker 3: sure be able to crack the case. They would say
Speaker 3: it in interviews like we know, we know detective stories.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, well, he's breaking the classic
Speaker 2: like the rule, which is who benefits, he's not benefiting, no, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: You can't follow the money like yeah, exactly. So the
Speaker 3: majority of those who were tracking the whole thing were
Speaker 3: positive that the purp was a literary scout and they
Speaker 3: were sure that whoever this person was, they were in
Speaker 3: New York, so because he tried to like mimic Eastern
Speaker 3: time zone apparently, so like a good chunk of those
Speaker 3: folks actually thought it was like one particular guy who's
Speaker 3: kind of like a horse's ass insult. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 3: would have been great to be able to finally pin
Speaker 3: him on him and everyone's like, man, yeah, he was
Speaker 3: just like this super jerk and then was like, it's
Speaker 3: gotta be him, dude. The other thing was that the
Speaker 3: scale of the operation was unprecedented. It's like hundreds of
Speaker 3: people had been impersonated, and like, as we said, more
Speaker 3: than a thousand manuscripts are taken. But we don't have motive.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make any sense. There's no financial gain, like
Speaker 3: you said, no, So during the investigation, authorities found zero
Speaker 3: evidence that he ever intended to profit from the manuscripts.
Speaker 3: He admitted to him, I just like to read them private.
Speaker 2: Seriously, where did you do with them?
Speaker 3: And he said he said he felt compelled to get
Speaker 3: his hands on him because like the access itself was
Speaker 3: the reward, the idea that he has access to all
Speaker 3: this stuff that he kind.
Speaker 2: Of like you know, kept out. He wasn't an outsider,
Speaker 2: he was the insiders insider.
Speaker 3: Yeah. January twenty twenty three, he pleaded guilty to one
Speaker 3: count of wire fraud.
Speaker 2: Wondering what they're going to charge him with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was also charged with identity theft, but they
Speaker 3: dropped that as part of the plea agreement. He was
Speaker 3: sentenced in March of twenty three and the judge was like,
Speaker 3: you know, this is this is a really unique situation.
Speaker 3: So he gets sentenced to time served, ordered to pay
Speaker 3: eighty eight thousand dollars in restitution, placed on supervised release,
Speaker 3: and then deported.
Speaker 2: They take away his internet access be guess not.
Speaker 3: And he so he has this like written statement where
Speaker 3: he expressed from Morris. He said that books which were
Speaker 3: once his refuge had become reminders of his wrongdoing. His
Speaker 3: career in publishing is over, Like books are ruined for him.
Speaker 3: He has nothing. So the judge like noted the seriousness
Speaker 3: of the crime and like the harm that he caused
Speaker 3: that you know here these authors had like this fear
Speaker 3: and this sense of violations that publishing professionals who'd been
Speaker 3: falsely suspected of wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: Who's the j is like, you know, come on, guys,
Speaker 2: and so like a great way to find out.
Speaker 3: No one likes the FBI keeps coming to your office,
Speaker 3: like are you sure you didn't do it? No, I didn't.
Speaker 2: We'd like you to submit for yet another test.
Speaker 3: We have so many people have accused you, and so
Speaker 3: like trust is damaged all across the industry that you know,
Speaker 3: people are now they don't believe emails that are coming
Speaker 3: in everyone's double triple checking. In the months after the case,
Speaker 3: all these publishing houses they started revising their security practices.
Speaker 2: Don't a bunch of new it guys are showing up
Speaker 2: that he created, So.
Speaker 3: Like email verification improved, manuscript sharing became way more controlled,
Speaker 3: and then there was training and fishing and impersonation like
Speaker 3: that that all these employees had to go through. But
Speaker 3: the case, it like left behind this deeper unease. Because
Speaker 3: he's not an outsider exploiting publishing from afar calls coming
Speaker 3: from inside the house. He understood the culture of the rhythms,
Speaker 3: the vulnerabilities, and so the crime like exposes how dependent
Speaker 3: the industry had become upon you know, trust without.
Speaker 2: Verification, Yeah, completely.
Speaker 3: And it forced really uncomfortable questions about access and exclusion,
Speaker 3: and like obsession in creative industries.
Speaker 2: Also, what about the publishing houses that he didn't imitate?
Speaker 2: Did they feel like we're on the outs, we didn't
Speaker 2: books anything worthwhile? That's how you find out you're like
Speaker 2: not a hot agent.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so painful. Yeah, and that hurt their feelings.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing a lot of Bruce digos so like his actions,
Speaker 3: they're criminal, they're deliberate.
Speaker 2: You're hit brunch lying about it like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he tried to hack us like fifteen times.
Speaker 2: Totally imitated me, like at least six times, like just
Speaker 2: in one year.
Speaker 3: You like that you start spreading these rumors that your
Speaker 3: book was one of the ones. Yeah, you know, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: I kept telling people how did this get?
Speaker 2: I called Margaret that one. I was like me too, girl.
Speaker 3: So you have like he has his desire to belong
Speaker 3: right and he winds up destroying every connection.
Speaker 2: That he saw, completely connection to the thing he loves.
Speaker 3: And there aren't precedents for the cases like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't know how they.
Speaker 3: Intellectual property theft revolves around profit for the most part,
Speaker 3: and like so his is just about possession and it's
Speaker 3: like emotionally driven. So like even among non monetary frauds.
Speaker 3: It's unusual because the scale was so massive. It's more
Speaker 3: comparable to like massive financial cybercrime. So you can't find
Speaker 3: any analogs in anything. The sophistication was approaching like state level.
Speaker 2: In person, I was going to say, yeah, really, it's
Speaker 2: much more like the North Korean hackers and the Russian
Speaker 2: hackers that type of move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then he's targeting creative labor rather than the
Speaker 3: institutions directly.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of laws to protect the feelings
Speaker 2: of vulnerability of authors.
Speaker 3: Which you're very sensitive. And then we have this like
Speaker 3: total apps. There's no spectacle, there's no profit, there's no coersion.
Speaker 3: So in the end, he didn't steal the books to
Speaker 3: sell them, like I said, he just wanted to feel close.
Speaker 3: He wanted to feel chosen, Yeah, part of that world.
Speaker 3: And he crosses this like legal and ethical line, he
Speaker 3: can't come back. And so publishing figures out, like you know,
Speaker 3: the quietest crimes can be the most devastating, truly, Zaren,
Speaker 3: I wonder what's your ridiculous takeaways question?
Speaker 2: I wonder if anyone this happens to be my ridiculous
Speaker 2: take perfect. So it works out. Well, Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 2: if anyone like felt bad for him and like would
Speaker 2: flip him a bone and like send him a manuscript
Speaker 2: like before it goes out. Anyway, just includes him on
Speaker 2: the like email list. Let's see if anyone noticed this
Speaker 2: is this from Bernadini what the guy?
Speaker 3: The guy like at Gmail?
Speaker 2: I will totally do that. If I was an agency
Speaker 2: right now, I was an author who had a new book,
Speaker 2: I would send it to.
Speaker 3: Him on like A I would create a fake Bernadinie email.
Speaker 2: Address or your new pen spelled two l's like, and then.
Speaker 3: Just copy it on everything, and people like, what is
Speaker 3: wrong with you?
Speaker 4: I'm sick of.
Speaker 2: Your detective is filled, Berdine.
Speaker 3: You want to feel included, you want access? Here you go,
Speaker 3: you know what we need?
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait a minute, you didn't tell me your
Speaker 2: ridiculous What was it that is?
Speaker 3: This is so weird? There are no analogs, there's nothing
Speaker 3: like that, George. Yeah, sure, okay, say it was? Who
Speaker 3: was my musings and my takeaway? You know what I
Speaker 3: really need is a talk bag? Oh? I love Hi,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth and Zarren.
Speaker 4: My name is Eric, and I am calling to you
Speaker 4: from my home in Watertown, Wisconsin, home of Ryan Bogwart.
Speaker 4: There's such a thrill to hear you guys talk about
Speaker 4: my little town of my home of forty four years.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to let you know about the culture, Elizabeth.
Speaker 4: You called it lovely. I would call it drunk. We
Speaker 4: were probably the drinking oft town in the drinking estate
Speaker 4: in the Union, and at one point we had a
Speaker 4: downtown intersection where three of the four buildings were bars.
Speaker 2: Have a good day.
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty lovely to meet, dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what is lovely?
Speaker 3: It's another person's what is.
Speaker 2: It about the latte? It's like we always think about
Speaker 2: like tropical places it being like drunk because like of advertising, right,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh yeah, live moths come down and get
Speaker 2: drunk here, and like we oh, like we have like
Speaker 2: you know, the Christmas lights in our palm tree of
Speaker 2: your corona, like we associated. But really the more northern latitudes,
Speaker 2: the drunker and the real whole fashional drinking.
Speaker 3: And the winter days are so short.
Speaker 2: Is that what it is? It just gets dark.
Speaker 3: I lived it.
Speaker 2: It's bizarre like Iceland, Wisconsin, doesn't matter, Glasgow, Russia, all
Speaker 2: of Mongolia. I mean, it's just.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what else she gonna do. It's cold, it's dark.
Speaker 2: They ferment horses, milking monk. Like, we can drink off
Speaker 2: that you drunk off.
Speaker 3: There's a was it seagull wine or whatever?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3: The last day.
Speaker 2: There's some stuff like when I hear some of the
Speaker 2: drinks people drinking northern latitudes and you're talking to somebody
Speaker 2: who will pretty much try any drink. What you got
Speaker 2: liquorund it, I'll try it. They have stuff there. Then
Speaker 2: I'm like, dude, what now, like seagull wine or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm like that, you know, Oh, that's like you we
Speaker 2: we've lost God's light here.
Speaker 3: That was awesome, Well lovely. That's it for today. You
Speaker 3: can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're
Speaker 3: also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and on Instagram.
Speaker 3: We're on YouTube at ridiculous Crime Pod. You can email
Speaker 3: us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and most importantly,
Speaker 3: leave us a talk back on the free iHeart app
Speaker 3: reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 3: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Literary Scout for the
Speaker 3: Baltimore Orioles Dave Coustin starring Analyse, Rucker is Judith. Research
Speaker 3: is by QR Code, Restaurant menu Thief Marissa Brown and
Speaker 3: student group Project PowerPoint Thief to Barie Davis. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by Phillible Pdf Thief Thomas Lee and heavily
Speaker 3: formatted Excel Spreadsheets EF Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided
Speaker 3: by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 3: and mister Andre. Executive producers are LG. Dishwasher Manual author
Speaker 3: Ben Bollen and Notorious Dan Brown impersonator Noel Brown. Redous Crime,
Speaker 3: Say It One More Times Crime.
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