Italian Filippo Bernardini, 30, has admitted to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts, many written by high-profile authors, reported news agency AFP. He did this by pretending to be influential figures from the world of publishing, and operating with email IDs that resembled authentic ones.
Among the authors whose manuscripts he targeted are Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, and Sally Rooney. The FBI arrested him in January, 2022. His knowledge of the publishing industry came from having worked for Simon & Schuster. Bernardini will be sentenced in April. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Bernardini’s motive behind the thefts remain unknown, for he did not leak the manuscripts. He has not been charged for attempting to sell the manuscripts. In December 2020, the New York Times published a detailed investigation titled “Why on Earth Is Someone Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts?”. “The real mystery is the endgame,” the report quoted Ecco Press founder Daniel Halpern, who has also been subjected to these phishing attacks, as saying.
