International man of mystery

In the end, the person who roused the ire of the publishing world by conning unpublished manuscripts from some of the best-known authors on bookshelves and became the focus of an FBI manhunt was (kinda, sorta) close to home

The manuscript thief was one of those weird stories, like Tiger King, that generated a ridiculous amount of attention during the pandemic. Someone was impersonating literary agents and publishers to obtain the prepublication manuscripts of mostly famous authors, including Stieg Larsson, Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood.

The thief would use a fake email account to message an agent, editor, or other person involved in the production of a targeted book and request a prepublication copy of the manuscript. The fake emails looked legit if you were rushing through your inbox. Real names and real companies were used, usually with only minor details changed: a `g' replaced a `q' or an `rn' subbed for an `m'.

The offender obviously knew his or her way around the publishing world, who to impersonate, who to contact, and how to frame a request so that it seemed on the up and up. More than 1,000 manuscripts were pilfered between 2016 and 2021.

As publishers around the world learned they were being had, the industry became seized with the project of identifying the thief. There were fears that the manuscripts would be sold on the black market, or that ransom demands would follow the thefts, or that pirate editions of the stolen manuscripts would appear online, or that plot details would leak and spoil sales.

In fact, the manuscripts simply disappeared into a black hole.

“The real mystery is the endgame,” Daniel Halpern, founder of Ecco Press and one of the impersonated, told The New York Times in late 2020. “It seems like no one knows anything beyond the fact of it, and that, I guess you could say, is alarming.”

Suspicion fell on fanatical readers. And frustrated writers bent on plagiarism. Hackers. Desperate book scouts. Organized crime. The Russians, of course.

The FBI was called and The New York Times put both a cultural reporter and a cybersecurity specialist on the story. Investigations were undertaken at publishing houses and literary agencies. Elaborate plots were devised to trap the thief. Because book people were involved, intricate and unavailing textual analysis was conducted on the fake emails.

“There's a bunch of us amateur Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys who have made our versions of the Claire Danes Homeland wall,” one book scout told New York magazine, which in 2021 devoted an exhaustive 7,000 words to the case and managed to get nowhere near the bottom of it.

New York's reporter, Reeves Wiedeman, acknowledged that the primary consequence of the thefts was “annoyance.” Also that he lost his mind on the story: two of his editors had to sit him down and say he “couldn't spend all year investigating a crime with no real victims. The world was sick and on fire with actual cyberattacks knocking hospitals and pipelines off-line.”

But pointlessness, reasoned Wiedeman, was the point. Both reporter and thief were involved in “an effortful obsession that produced little profit.” Isn't that what publishing is about?

A few weeks ago, Filippo Bernardini, a 30-year-old Italian employed in a minor role by Simon & Schuster UK, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and “aggravated identity theft” in a Manhattan federal court. “I knew my actions were wrong,” he told the judge. His lawyers and government prosecutors have agreed to a recommended sentencing range of 15 to 21 months in prison, a fine of up to $75,000, and restitution in the amount of $88,000. He will be sentenced on April 5.

Not much is known about Bernardini. He was arrested by the FBI in early 2022 at JFK Airport. He was on his way to Manhattan for a vacation with his partner. New York spotted him in court earlier this month and, apparently never having laid eyes on Steve Jobs, reported that “he looked the part of a man in publishing — dark sweater, dark slacks, glasses.” He spoke with an accent bearing traces “of both his childhood in Italy and his professional life in London.”

It has been reported elsewhere that Bernardini's father is a physician and small-time Italian politician with progressive leanings. His boyfriend posted his stupidly high bail of $300,000.

Alex Shephard writes in the New Republic that Bernardini's antics are “the stuff of Ocean's Eleven,” which might be true if you don't consider a $150-million heist, explosions, and shootouts central to Ocean's Eleven. He is rightly skeptical of the FBI's theory that the thief intended to use the stolen goods to somehow boost his career. There is no evidence in the indictment that Bernardini read the manuscripts, let alone exploited them. Shephard's pet theory, rooted in a reading of a novel Bernardini published as a teenager, is that he's a prickly outsider, desperate for recognition, inclined to grudges.

I don't know. He sounds to me like someone who initially wanted to read a particular manuscript before publication, developed a habit, and got in over his head. Maybe someday he' ll explain himself.

Most amusing in the whole affair is the U.S. Department of Justice's press release announcing the indictment of Bernardini, apparently ghosted by the hacks at Popular Detective:

“Unpublished manuscripts are works of art to the writers who spend the time and energy creating them. Publishers do all they can to protect those unpublished pieces because of their value. We allege Mr. Bernardini used his insider knowledge of the industry to get authors to send him their unpublished books and texts by posing as agents, publishing houses, and literary scouts. Mr. Bernardini was allegedly trying to steal other people's literary ideas for himself, but in the end he wasn't creative enough to get away with it.”

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams piles on: “This real-life story now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Bernardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds.”

In addition to failing to show that Bernardini intended to use others' ideas for his own purposes, the government's nine-page indictment demonstrates nothing in the way of material harm. The claim that “publishers do all they can to protect (unpublished manuscripts) because of their value” doesn't fly. As the New Republic noted, publishers will send an advance reader copy of pretty much any book, including those notionally under embargo, to any person with a minimally professional reason for requesting one. I was a journalist for several decades and recall only a few books that we couldn't get our hands on pre-pub, all of them non-fiction.

No doubt Bernardini caused some people anxiety and distress, maybe even a sleepless night. But he's no John Derringer as the G-men seem to think. Jailing him is nuts.

I'm with Corriere dell'Umbria, a small newspaper in Bernardini's home region, not in its insistence that the thief is admirable for speaking several languages, penetrating the Byzantine world of book publishing, and “mastering computer skills like 007,” but in its assertion that his deeds were accomplished “without extorting a penny, without threatening anyone, and without procuring any advantage for himself other than to read a book before it went to print.”

I tried to think of an appropriately literary punishment for Bernardini. Came up empty, so I reached out to someone with a much sharper imagination. She also happens to be one of Bernardini's victims.

“He certainly caused folks to waste a lot of time,” says Margaret Atwood. “Though he did inspire an entertaining game of Whoever Can It Be.”

Her recommended sentence: “He must be doomed to toil with great earnestness at very long, complicated, and charmless novels featuring talking gerbils that are, however, always rejected by publishers.”

Sounds perfect to me.

The real mystery is the endgame. It seems like no one knows anything beyond the fact of it, and that, I guess you could say, is alarming. DANIEL HALPERN, FOUNDER, ECCO PRESS, 2020 INTERVIEW

There's a bunch of us amateur Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys who have made our versions of the Claire Danes Homeland wall BOOK SCOUT,

2021 INTERVIEW

This real-life story now reads as a cautionary tale ... U.S. ATTORNEY

DAMIAN WILLIAMS,

JAN. 5, 2023