Has the Literary World’s Great Phishing Scam Been Solved?

📚 The story… Vulture reports the scam was first undercovered in early 2017, when two editors of a Swedish book publisher received an unusual email. Upon further inspection, they discovered the message – while a pretty convincing attempt to obtain an unpublished manuscript – was 100% fake.

Over the next five-ish years, the scammer used a formula of slightly tweaked email addresses and up-to-date industry lingo to successfully trick authors, agents, editors, scouts, and even judges for the Booker prize into handing over confidential info and unpublished works. (For example: the scammer used "@marsilioeditori.com" to impersonate the domain "@marsilioeditori.it")

• The scammer managed to obtain intel about upcoming projects or film rights, as well as manuscripts of highly anticipated novels by Margaret Atwood, Sally Rooney, and actor Ethan Hawke, among others.
• But no ransom or blackmail demands ever materialized. None of the books ever turned up online, and everything from celebrity releases to debut novels by unknown writers were targeted.
• Weird, huh? Some suspected the individual was a literary scout, attempting to secure information to give themself a leg up on film and television deals.

🕵️‍♀️ Mystery solved?... This past Wednesday, the FBI arrested Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen who worked at UK publisher Simon & Schuster. He was charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a New York district court, with the indictment saying Bernardini had registered more than 160 fake internet domains to impersonate others since 2016.

• Simon & Schuster has suspended Bernardini pending further information. There is no suggestion that the publishing house is at fault and they're not named in the legal papers.