USA: FBI catches suspect in book manuscript theft series

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Rooney Mara in the Stieg-Larsson film adaptation "Verblendung": The perpetrator also tried to get hold of the manuscript of a novel from the "Millennium" series

Photo: LMK Media / ddp images

US law enforcement agencies believe they have solved a criminal case that has kept the publishing industry nervous for years.

On Wednesday, a man was arrested on charges of a variety of fraudulent literary acts: He allegedly faked the identities of various personalities in the book industry in order to amass a veritable library of unpublished manuscripts.

Filippo Bernardini, an Italian national who works in publishing in London, was arrested Wednesday after landing at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

This was announced by the responsible prosecutor for the New York district in a statement.

Accordingly, the 29-year-old Bernardini has to face allegations of computer fraud and serious identity theft.

He is to be brought before a federal court on Thursday.

For years, someone had thrown the publishing industry into confusion with an international phishing scam: A person who obviously had insider knowledge of the industry posed as a literary agent or a publishing employee - with the help of fake e-mail accounts in which, for example an "m" was replaced by an "rn", making them easy to confuse with real addresses.

Heavyweights and debut novels

In the emails, the person tried to get authors or publishers to give her access to unpublished manuscripts.

Among the writers targeted in this way were industry heavyweights like Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan, celebrities like Ethan Hawke, and literary prizes like Louise Erdrich and Anthony Doerr.

The person also tried to get a novel from the "Millennium" thriller series, which was continued in Sweden after the death of its creator, Stieg Larsson.

However, among the books she was after, there were also works by debutants or just literary insiders known authors.

This stock pick made the ongoing fraud attempts all the more mysterious.

Apparently it wasn't about selling the manuscripts illegally or making them public.

In any case, research by the New York Times and New York Magazine did not reveal any evidence of this.

In the statement by the New York public prosecutor, it is said that Bernardini apparently pretended to be personalities in the publishing industry so that authors would send him manuscripts "for his own benefit."

What exactly this benefit consists of remains open for the time being.

Mainly the perpetrator gained an information advantage - but what this was used for remains open.

Or did personal motives play a role?

But which?

For the public prosecutor, "this story from real life" should now be read "as a deterrent example" because there was "a turnaround": Bernardini is now threatened with criminal charges for his misdeeds.

The indictment states that the offenses took place between at least August 2016 and July last year.

Over the years, Bernardini has accumulated hundreds of works.

Bernardini works in London for a large, international publishing house with headquarters in the USA, it said further in the text.

On the profile of a certain "Filippo B." on the social network LinkedIn, there was an indication that he worked for the Simon & Schuster publishing house.

In a communication, the publishing house was quoted as saying that they were "shocked and shocked by the allegations against an employee of Simon & Schuster UK."

Bernardini is initially released for the duration of the investigation.

"Securing the intellectual property of our authors is of the utmost importance to Simon & Schuster," it continues;

one is grateful that the FBI is investigating the case.

feb / AP