Worker of publishing company allegedly stole unpublished book manuscripts

Bernardini had been working at the publishing company for 5 years.

(Web Desk): Filippo Bernardini, a 29-year-old Italian citizen who worked as a rights coordinator for a publishing company Simon & Schuster UK has been arrested over the charges of tricking authors into sending him unpublished book manuscripts.

Bernardini had been working at the publishing company for 5 years. According to Federal authorities he collected hundreds of unpublished manuscripts from Aug. 2016 to July 2021 as he impersonated real people in the publishing industry to get the unpublished manuscripts. Bernardini created fake email accounts and webpages similar to that of real people like talent agents and people at publishing houses.

"Unpublished manuscripts are works of art to the writers who spend the time and energy creating them,” stated the assistant director-in-charge of the FBI s New York office, adding that the publishers protect those unpublished pieces of art as they are aware of their value.

"Mr. Bernardini was allegedly trying to steal other people s literary ideas for himself, but in the end he was not creative enough to get away with it," he further stated.

Bernardini is being charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, punishment for both charges goes as a sentence of 20 years in prison and a sentence of two consecutive years in prison respectively.