Authorities say they’ve solved a publishing business whodunit with the current arrest of a person accused of quite a few literary heists in current years, allegedly impersonating others in the business to amass a veritable library of unpublished works.
Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen working in publishing in London, was arrested on Wednesday after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport, stated Damian Williams, U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York in a press release.
Bernardini, 29, faces costs together with wire fraud, which carries a penalty of as much as 20 years in jail, and aggravated id theft. He was anticipated to look in federal court docket on Thursday. No info on an legal professional for him was obtainable.
For years, the publishing business has been baffled by a global phishing scheme in which somebody with obvious inside information impersonated an editor or an agent – by establishing a pretend e-mail account – and tried to trick an creator or an editor into sending hyperlinks to unpublished manuscripts. Works by Margaret Atwood and Ethan Hawke have been amongst these focused.
The ongoing scheme was all of the extra mysterious as a result of whoever was searching for the manuscripts was apparently not making an attempt to promote them or in any other case publicly exploit having them.
“Bernardini allegedly impersonated publishing business people in order to have authors, together with a Pulitzer prize winner, ship him prepublication manuscripts for his personal profit,” Williams stated in the assertion. “This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary story, with the plot twist of Bernardini going through federal legal costs for his misdeeds.”
According to the indictment towards Bernardini, which was filed in July however solely unsealed on Wednesday, the schemes had been happening from a minimum of August 2016 by July of final 12 months.
It stated Bernardini “used fraudulent, look-alike, domains to impersonate people concerned in the publishing business to achieve surreptitious entry to those supplies,” and that through the years he “impersonated, defrauded, and tried to defraud, lots of of people.”
Bernardini collected lots of of unpublished works, in accordance with the indictment.
In the indictment, Bernardini was described as working in London for a “main, worldwide, US-based publishing home.” A LinkedIn profile for a Filippo B. stated he labored for Simon & Schuster.
In a press release, the writer stated it was “shocked and horrified to study as we speak of the allegations of fraud and id theft by an worker of Simon & Schuster UK.”
The writer stated Bernardini had been suspended pending further info, including, “The safekeeping of our authors’ mental property is of main significance to Simon & Schuster, and for all in the publishing business, and we’re grateful to the FBI for investigating these incidents and bringing costs towards the alleged perpetrator.” – AP
