It said Bernardini “used fraudulent, look-alike, domains to impersonate individuals involved in the publishing industry to gain surreptitious access to these materials,” and that over the years he “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals.”īernardini collected hundreds of unpublished works, according to the indictment. “This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Bernardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds.”Īccording to the indictment against Bernardini, which was filed in July but only unsealed on Wednesday, the schemes had been taking place from at least August 2016 through July of last year. “Bernardini allegedly impersonated publishing industry individuals in order to have authors, including a Pulitzer prize winner, send him prepublication manuscripts for his own benefit,” Williams said in the statement. The ongoing scheme was all the more mysterious because whoever was seeking the manuscripts was apparently not attempting to sell them or otherwise publicly exploit having them. Works by Margaret Atwood and Ethan Hawke were among those targeted. No information on an attorney for him was available.įor years, the publishing industry has been baffled by an international phishing scheme in which someone with apparent inside knowledge impersonated an editor or an agent - by setting up a fake email account - and attempted to trick an author or an editor into sending links to unpublished manuscripts. He was expected to appear in federal court on Thursday.
attorney for the Southern District of New York in a statement.īernardini, 29, faces charges including wire fraud, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, and aggravated identity theft. Kennedy International Airport, said Damian Williams, U.S.
NEW YORK - Authorities say they’ve solved a publishing industry whodunit with the arrest Wednesday of a man accused of numerous literary heists in recent years, allegedly impersonating others in the industry to amass a veritable library of unpublished works.įilippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen working in publishing in London, was arrested Wednesday after arriving at John F.
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