“Bernardini allegedly impersonated publishing industry individuals in order to have authors, including a Pulitzer prize winner, send him prepublication manuscripts for his own benefit,” Williams said in the statement. “This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Bernardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds.”
According to the indictment against Bernardini, which was filed in July but only unsealed on Wednesday, the schemes had been taking place from at least August 2016 through July of last year.
It said Bernardini “used fraudulent, look-alike, domains to impersonate individuals involved in the publishing industry to gain surreptitious access to these materials,” and that over the years he “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals.”
Bernardini collected hundreds of unpublished works, according to the indictment.
In the indictment, Bernardini was described as working in London for a “major, international, US-based publishing house.” A LinkedIn profile for a Filippo B. said he worked for Simon & Schuster.
In a statement, the publisher said it was “shocked and horrified to learn today of the allegations of fraud and identity theft by an employee of Simon & Schuster UK.”
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