Filippo Bernardini, Wire Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft, New York 2023

A federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court charges Filippo Bernardini with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in connection with a multi-year scheme to impersonate individuals involved in the publishing industry and fraudulently obtain prepublication manuscripts of novels and other books.

According to the indictment, Bernardini, a 41-year-old Italian citizen, began impersonating agents, editors, and other individuals involved in publishing in August 2016 to fraudulently obtain prepublication manuscripts. He created fake email accounts that were designed to impersonate real people employed in the publishing industry, including literary talent agencies, publishing houses, literary scouts, and others.

Bernardini allegedly created over 160 internet domains that were crafted to be confusingly similar to the real entities that they were impersonating, often replacing the lower-case letter with the lower-case letters and , which, when placed together as , resemble an .

He used these fake email accounts to request prepublication manuscripts from authors, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who sent him the manuscripts believing him to be a legitimate industry professional. Over the course of the scheme, Bernardini impersonated hundreds of distinct people and engaged in hundreds of unique efforts to fraudulently obtain electronic copies of manuscripts that he was not entitled to.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, "Filippo Bernardini allegedly impersonated publishing industry individuals in order to have authors, including a Pulitzer prize winner, send him prepublication manuscripts for his own benefit. This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Bernardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds."

Bernardini was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 30, 2024 and will be presented before United States Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger in Manhattan federal court.

Assistant Director-in-Charge Driscoll said, "Unpublished manuscripts are works of art to the writers who spend the time and energy creating them. Publishers do all they can to protect those unpublished pieces because of their value.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 Bernardini used his insider knowledge of the industry to get authors to send him their unpublished books and texts by posing as agents, publishing houses, and literary scouts.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."

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon.

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