NOVEL SCHEME

Alleged Book Manuscript Bandit Expected to Plead Guilty

Filippo Bernardini is accused of impersonating literary agents and editors to secure works before their publication.

A man accused of posing as literary agents and publishers as part of a scheme to obtain unpublished book manuscripts is expected to plead guilty to wire fraud in relation to the literary plot this week, according to a report. Prosecutors told victims of the scam that they believe Filippo Bernardini—who was busted by the FBI last year—will own up to the crime before a Manhattan judge on Friday, according to the New York Times. The agency said the Italian citizen had “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals” over years in order to get his hands on unpublished manuscripts. The report says that works from the likes of Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood were targeted in the scheme along with unpublished manuscripts from debut novelists. The Justice Department’s indictment did not say why Bernardini, who worked as a rights coordinator for Simon & Schuster UK, did not say that he intended to sell the works, though industry insiders speculated to the Times that he may have wanted to gain insider knowledge of secretive projects in order to burnish his own reputation in the publishing world.