“These manuscripts have never been leaked. I wanted to hug them tightly to my chest and be one of the few people who love them first before they hit the bookstores. There were times when I read manuscripts and felt a special and unique relationship with the author, as if I were the publisher of this book.”

This is only part of the apology of the famous manuscript thief. “Arsène Lupin from books”as it was called. 30 year old Filippo Bernardiniwho was arrested last year at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on charges of forgery and misappropriation of manuscripts, pleaded guilty last January, and just days ago his apology was posted on The Bookseller’s website.

Renowned book thief Filippo Bernardini claims his love of reading made him steal works by famous authors https://t.co/3UGH4W2jAc pic.twitter.com/Tm2hukPQEF

— New York Post (@nypost) March 10, 2023

“While I was working, I saw how manuscripts were shared between publishers, agents and talent scouts, or even people outside the industry. So I asked myself, “Why can’t I read these manuscripts too?”

Filippo Bernardini, whose attorney Jennifer Brown wrote in her sentencing note that he grew up as lonely, bullied, gay in a conservative region of Italy, who found solace in burying himself in books, confessed to misappropriating over 1,000 manuscripts by both known and non-authored authors.

These are her most popular names Margaret Atwood (in 2019, the agent spoke of an attempt to intercept her manuscript), her Sally Rooneyfrom Ian McEwenBye publications want the case to be connected with attempts to steal his manuscripts Stig Larson and his Ethan Hawke. In the case of Stieg Larsson, New York Magazine reported in 2021 that the Swedish publishers of the popular author’s Millennium series had received a message from a supposed colleague in Italy asking them to translate a copy of the book before it was released in Sweden. .

“Filippo Bernardini used his knowledge of publishing to set up a system to steal valuable work from authors, threatening the publishing industry,” said Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

160 letters, 10 different languages

Since 2016, when it was first discovered in the book market that there was a “manuscript thief”, Bernardini he tried and often succeeded in wresting unpublished manuscripts from publishers, writers, agents and intelligence agents. He created over 160 different e-mail addresses that looked like real ones and communicated in more than ten languages, speaking publishing language, since he himself has been in the publishing business for most of his professional life.

In his apology, Bookseller reports, he described his course of action:I once created a fake email address by pretending to be someone I knew in the publishing industry and sent an email to someone I also knew asking for a manuscript before publication. I wrote in the style and language that my colleagues used. Since the relevant requests were granted, from that moment this behavior has become an obsession, compulsive behavior. As I write this now, I can feel my fingers tremble as I type at the thought of how blatant, stupid and wrong my act was.”

However, Reeves Wideman and Lila Shapiro’s report in The Vulture of the New Yorker about the “Talented Mr. Bernardini” made an impression. Two journalists are talking about open attacks Filippo Bernardini to his potential or actual victims. In fact, he became so engrossed in his role that he reportedly contacted the writers, telling them their work was crap and they needed to make changes.

Looks like he did the same to the Vulture reporters. Wiedemann and Shapiro assumed that he had found out about their study and sent them an email saying: “Listen to me: drop this article immediately! I wonder who pays you for such nonsense!

Simon & Schuster and Greek partners

Filippo Bernardini, until he was arrested in the US, worked in London as an international production coordinator at the historic home of Simon & Schuster. This gave him a large network of contacts and, in turn, information. He studied translation and languages, worked as a translator and trainee in publishing houses all over Europe, and in Italy published a novel about the difficult years of his childhood called ‘Bulli’, signing himself with the not-so-fortunate pseudonym ‘Filippo B.’.

While he was at Simon & Schuster, for which there was no suggestion of their involvement, he certainly had contacts with publishers in various parts of the world, as well as in Greece.

OUR Nikos Argyris, publisher of Ikaros, told me in a conversation we had in the past (ERT, 02.10.2022) that “already the day after his arrest, a colleague of Bernardini from Simon & Schuster contacted us and expressed everyone’s surprise at this news. In fact, he told me verbatim that they said goodbye on Tuesday-Wednesday of that week, leaving for the Christmas holidays, and two days later they were informed – also from the media – about his arrest in America.

Regarding the collaboration between them, Nikos Argyris told me: “I couldn’t imagine that this is the same person with whom we have collaborated and exchanged messages for so many years. Of course, Bernardini’s role at Simon & Schuster was purely administrative, so the messages we exchanged dealt with only practical matters. He was very formal in his contacts.”

Asked to explain what he thought motivated him to do this, Nikos Argyris replied: “It seems very strange to me in this whole affair that he himself did not intend to derive any financial or other benefit from this whole story, as he seems has never won anything, which I think makes it even more exciting and weird. I can guess that the only reason he went through this process was some sort of ego satisfaction; perhaps he wanted to prove that he could do it. And that the system is, so to speak, vulnerable.”

Daniel Sandström, publisher of the Swedish firm Albert Bonniers Förlag, who was among the victims, said it was difficult to understand what the motive for the fraud was. He quoted a BBC report. “The literary answer to this question, I think, is that someone did it for the thrill – there is a psychological puzzle at the heart of this story.”

“I will always be associated with this crime”

Bernardini will be sentenced in federal court in Manhattan on April 5. He faces up to 20 years in prison. As part of his guilty plea, he agreed to pay $88,000 in restitution. His lawyers asked the judge to sentence him to a prison term equal to the one he had already served.

His lawyer claimed that Bernardini had already “suffer a professional and reputational collapse” and was “virtually excluded from the publishing industry”, a fact “especially painful” for himself, given “his desire to feel like a man of the industry,” as Buxeller put it.

He said in his apology: “My name will always be associated with this crime. Is my trademark. and I will carry it for the rest of my life.”