It was the stuff of novels: For years, a con artist plagued the publishing business, impersonating editors and brokers to drag off a whole bunch of literary heists. However the manuscripts obtained from high-profile authors had been by no means resold or leaked, rendering the thefts all of the extra perplexing.
The Thursday sentencing of Filippo Bernardini in Manhattan federal court docket introduced the saga to an finish and, with it, lastly some solutions. After pleading responsible to at least one rely of wire fraud in January, Bernardini was sentenced to time served, avoiding jail on a felony cost that carried as much as 20 years in jail. Prosecutors had requested for a sentence of no less than a 12 months.
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Bernardini, now 30, impersonated a whole bunch of individuals over the course of the scheme that started round August 2016 and obtained greater than a thousand manuscripts, together with from high-profile authors like Margaret Atwood and Ethan Hawke, authorities have stated.
In an emotional, four-page letter to Decide Colleen McMahon submitted earlier this month, Bernardini apologized for what he characterised as his “egregious, stupid and wrong” actions. He additionally supplied perception into his motivations, which had lengthy stymied victims and observers alike even after his plea.
He described a deep love of books that stemmed from childhood and led him to pursue a publishing profession in London. Whereas he obtained an internship at a literary company there, he wrote, he had bother securing a full-time job within the business afterward.
“While employed, I saw manuscripts being shared between editors, agents, and literary scouts or even with individuals outside the industry. So, I wondered: why can I not also get to read these manuscripts?” he recounted.
He spoofed an e-mail deal with of somebody he knew and mimicked his former colleagues’ tone to ask for a manuscript that had but to be revealed. The success of that deception turned his quest for ill-gotten books into “an obsession, a compulsive behaviour.”
“I had a burning desire to feel like I was still one of these publishing professionals and read these new books,” he wrote.
“Every time an author sent me the manuscript I would feel like I was still part of the industry. At the time, I did not think about the harm I was causing,” he added. “I never wanted to and I never leaked these manuscripts. I wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops.”
As a part of a bid to keep away from jail, Bernardini’s legal professionals additionally submitted greater than a dozen letters to the choose from his family and friends. In a novelistic twist of kinds, amongst them was a letter from a sufferer — author Jesse Ball, the writer of “Samedi the Deafness,” “Curfew” and “The Divers’ Game.”
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Bernardini impersonated Ball’s editor to persuade the author to ship a number of unpublished manuscripts, Ball stated in his letter pushing for leniency. Decrying the state of the business as “more and more corporate and cookiecutter” and referring to the crime as a “caper” and a “trivial thing, frivolous thing,” Ball argued that “we must be grateful when something human enters the picture: when the publishing industry for once becomes something worth writing about.”
“For once a person cared deeply about something—what matter that he was an interloper? You cannot imagine the soul crushing boredom of run-of-the-mill publishing correspondence,” Ball wrote, including that he suffered no hurt from the thefts aside from some confusion. “I’m grateful that there is still room in the world for something facetious to occur now and then.”
In weighing arguments from the prosecution and protection, McMahon pushed again on the concept the crime was victimless, with New York journal’s Vulture — the publication that introduced the thriller to public consideration with a 2021 story known as “The Spine Collector” — reporting that “she was especially moved by a letter from a literary scout” who had been accused of Bernardini’s crimes. Vulture additionally reported that McMahon expressed sympathy for Bernardini in mild of a brand new autism analysis, however stated it didn’t excuse the threats he made in some correspondence. However she concluded a jail sentence wouldn’t assist the victims.
Bernardini — an Italian citizen and British resident who was arrested at John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport in January 2022 — might be deported from the U.S. Courtroom paperwork present he requested to be deported to the UK, the place he lives along with his companion and canine, with Italy because the designated various.
As a part of his responsible plea, Bernardini agreed to pay $88,000 in restitution, which court docket paperwork present will go to Penguin Random Home.
“The cruel irony is that every time I open a book,” Bernardini wrote of his one-time ardour, “it reminds me of my wrongdoings and what they led me to.”
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The Related Press contributed to this text.
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