Pretending to be an agent of a publishing house and sometimes a talent scout, assuming the identity of several operators in the publishing world, he managed to fraudulently obtain unpublished manuscripts and among his victims were the American actor Ethan Hawke and Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. But his "career" ended after his arrest. In handcuffs, at New York airport, the Italian Filippo Bernardini, 29, resident in London.
In a statement, the New York District Attorney's Office informed that the young man, who worked at Simon & Shuster, will have to answer for computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.
In practice, "he used his knowledge from within the industry to get authors to send him unpublished books and texts, pretending to be an agent, a publishing house or a talent scout", with the aim of "stealing the other literary ideas "for his benefit," said Michael Driscoll, deputy director of the local FBI office.
(Unioneonline / ss)
