Topline
Filippo Bernardini, 29, of London, was arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport Wednesday, accused of having impersonated hundreds of agents, editors and other publishing professionals online in order to obtain unpublished manuscripts for novels and other books, five years after authors and publishers began finding themselves targeted by mysterious phishing attempts.
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Key Facts
Bernardini was charged with wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory consecutive sentence of two years in prison, according to a DOJ release.
Charges were leveled against Bernardini in connection to a multi-year plot to obtain hundreds of unpublished manuscripts by impersonating publishing professionals using fake email accounts, according to the release, which also pointed out that manuscript piracy can undermine secondary markets for published work and can harm an author’s reputation.
Bernardini is accused of having registered over 160 web domains to create email addresses that were misleadingly similar to publishing professionals’ actual email addresses, using typographical tricks like substituting the letters “r” and “n” for the letter “m.”
Around September 2020, Bernardini tricked an unnamed Pulitzer Prize-winning author into emailing him a copy of the author’s forthcoming manuscript by impersonating a well-known editor, according to the DOJ announcement.
Bernardini also created a webpage imitating a New York City-based literary scouting company in order to dupe company employees into entering their usernames and passwords, the release alleged.
On his LinkedIn page, Bernardini, an Italian citizen, describes himself as a foreign rights management professional and a translator for books and corporate materials, and claims to be an employee of Simon & Schuster, a company neither named nor accused of wrongdoing by the DOJ.
Key Background
Beginning in 2016, publishing industry professionals noticed email phishing attempts aimed at obtaining copies of pre-publication manuscripts. The emails targeted prominent authors like Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan and celebrities like Ethan Hawke, as well as little-known debut writers, the New York Times reported. However, the manuscripts did not surface on the black market, leaving the online impersonator’s motivations murky. The impersonator showed familiarity with industry jargon, such as writing “MS” for manuscript, Vulture reported. Bernardini allegedly used insider knowledge of the publishing industry to deceive authors into handing over their writing for his own benefit, said Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York office.
Key Quote
“This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Bernardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds,” quipped U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
Tangent
An assistant at the talent and media agency WME realized an email supposedly from her boss was fraudulent because her boss would never write “please” or “thank you,” Vulture reported.
Further Reading
“F.B.I. Arrests Man Accused of Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts” (New York Times)
“The Spine Collector” (Vulture)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/01/05/man-swiped-unpublished-novels-in-online-scam-fbi-alleges/