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An Italian man has pleaded guilty in New York to impersonating editors and agents in order to steal more than 1,000 unpublished book manuscripts belonging to authors such as Margaret Atwood and actor Ethan Hawke.
Filippo Bernardini, 30, a London resident who had been employed there by Simon & Schuster, entered a plea to one count of wire fraud before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in federal court in Manhattan.
Bernardini could face more than a year in prison under recommended sentencing guidelines when he is scheduled to be sentenced April 5 before another judge, attorney Hannah McCrea said.
Prosecutors said that from August 2016 until his arrest in January 2022, Bernardini created fake email addresses and registered more than 160 fake domain names to pretend to be a publishing professional, in an attempt to claim the author’s work as his own.
He said Simon & Schuster’s former rights coordinator often replaced the lowercase “m” with an “rn,” so that “simonandschuster” could appear as “sirnonandschuster,” for example.
‘Insider knowledge’ is used
The stolen manuscripts included the work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, prosecutors said.
Bernardini “used his inside knowledge of the publishing industry to create a scheme that stole valuable works from authors and threatened the publishing industry,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan said in a statement.
McCrea, the federal public defender, declined to comment on the request.
Bernardini has pleaded not guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges, after he was arrested upon arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Simon & Schuster has not been accused of wrongdoing. The publisher did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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