For years, tons of of high-profile manuscripts — together with early variations of books by Margaret Atwood and Sally Rooney — have been stolen in a phishing scheme. The most puzzling half of the case was that nothing appeared to come back from these thefts; uthe manuscripts weren’t leaked or bought, so far as anybody may inform. So why go to the difficulty of impersonating a writer with a purpose to get these manuscripts?
Last yr, we lastly discovered the individual behind the theft of roughly 1,000 unpublished books: Filippo Bernardini. But that didn’t deal with the larger questions concerning the case.
Bernardini has now gone to courtroom and pleaded responsible to wire fraud. His lawyer, Jennifer Brown, argued for a light-weight sentence, saying he grew up lonely, usually bullied for being homosexual, and located refuge in books.
Bernardini stated he “wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops” and that studying them at this stage felt like having a “special and unique connection with the author, almost like I was the editor of that book.”
The argument labored, in that Filippo Bernardini won’t be going to jail. He might be deported to the UK or Italy, nevertheless, and should pay $88,000 to Penguin Random House to cowl their authorized charges.
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