[1][2] Little is known of his early life, aside from what he subsequently wrote in his autobiography, in which he claims to have been born in 1888 to a poor farmer's family, left the Italian countryside in 1910 to fight in the Mexican Revolution against Emiliano Zapata, had been involved in various political intrigues in Eastern Europe and to have married a Polish countess.
[1][2] Letters to his brother indicate that he left Italy in 1908 for San Francisco and in 1911 traveled to Vladivostok, where he joined the Allied Expeditionary Forces intelligence services.
The Italian consulate in Tianjin had arrest and deportation orders issued for Vespa, who was accused of smuggling weapons and dealing in drugs on behalf of Zhang.
His family was captured and eventually freed after Vespa agreed to work for the new Japanese rulers of Manchuria under the name "Commander Feng".
Through an Australian reporter, Vespa published an account of his life in Manchukuo in a sensationalist book intended for mass audiences in 1938: Secret Agent of Japan: A Handbook to Japanese Imperialism.
Vespa was instructed to compile reports on wealthy members of Harbin's Jewish community, White Russian and other foreign and Chinese residents.
Vespa also reported that Japanese secret agents were instructed to prevent complaints and petitions filed by the local population from reaching the members of the Lytton Commission during their visit.
In 1940, he was imprisoned in Shanghai by the Kenpeitai, on accusations of being a spy for the United States, but as an Italian and thus also a citizen of a Japanese ally, he could not be sentenced.
[1][2] After the war, Genevieve visited the Italian Embassy in Shanghai and was shown documents informing that her father had been taken prisoner by the Japanese, who took him to Taiwan and executed him there or perhaps in the Philippines.