When we think of a cultured and chameleonic scammer, the face of Matt Damon materializes in our mind, or the Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film). Or that of Anna Delvey, the Russian girl who made the New York contemporary art scene believe that she was a rich heiress, such a magnetic character, also because of the looks – the eyeglasses worn during the process, the brittle hair, the eyeliner in the photo of the piece The Cut – which became the subject of a TV series (coming soon). “Fake it until you make it”, they say: luxury, dream holidays, a life beyond your means, the priceless satisfaction that gives you to understand that it takes very little to bite the rich, that is to pretend to be like them (it’s not that difficult, don’t they all look the same?). For a few days, thanks to New York Times, we discovered that to these faces we could add one, that of Filippo Bernardini, 29, employed in the rights office of the Simon & Schuster Uk publishing house, accused of having “impersonated, defrauded and tried to defraud hundreds of individuals” for more than 5 years, in the meantime obtaining hundreds of unpublished manuscripts. An all-Italian pride, which crowns a 2021 in which our country has triumphed in every field.
Captured by the FBI at John F. Kennedy Airport, where he had just landed, Mr. Bernardini was charged with computer fraud and aggravated identity theft in the United States District Court. The arrest closes a case of phishing in publishing that had been going on for years (we had already talked about it here) but what made the scam truly unique was that it was not clear why this mysterious character was trying to steal unpublished manuscripts, in a world, like publishing, where earning real money – either normally or by cheating – is practically a miracle. In short, there is the scammer, the scam, the skill, the chameleon-like talent of being mistaken for someone else, but the part of linen shirts and boat holidays is missing, in short, all the coolness part is missing. What did Mr Bernardini do with all these unpublished books? He read them?
According to the indictment, to get his hands on the manuscripts, Mr Bernardini would have sent e-mails impersonating real people working in the publishing industry – a specific publisher, for example – using fake e-mail addresses. It used slightly modified domain names like penguinrandornhouse.com instead of penguinrandomhouse.com, putting an “rn” in place of an “m”. The prosecution claimed to have registered more than 160 fraudulent Internet domains impersonating publishing professionals and companies. Bernardini left traces online, omitting his last name on his social media accounts, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, where he described an “obsession with the written word and languages.” According to his LinkedIn profile, he earned his bachelor’s degree in Chinese from the Catholic University of Milan, and later worked as an Italian translator for the memoir of Chinese comic author Rao Pingru, Our history. He also holds a Masters in Publishing from University College London. His passion? “Ensuring that books can be read and enjoyed around the world and in multiple languages.”
At 29, Bernardini knew how to translate from Chinese, Korean and Swedish, he perfectly knew the publishing world and its dynamics, always showing himself on the piece. One wonders why he didn’t want to try to make a career simply by relying on his excellent resume and his remarkable skills. Phishing attacks have been so many and far-reaching, targeting publishing professionals in the United States, Sweden and Taiwan, among other countries, that some have claimed they could not have been the work of a single person. One wonders, if he was so good, why he didn’t try to grow from the position he held at Simon & Schuster, a major publishing house. As Eva Ferri, the Italian editor of and / or and Europa Editions who lives there in London, underlines, ours was not going to fare too well: “a position like yours is paid from 18 to 24 pounds a year, which it means, in London, living with several roommates and not even being able to go out for dinner. There is talk of high levels of frustration, especially for an immigrant ».
But what makes the hypotheses deviate from the economic track is the fact that in all the years in which Bernardini has been active he has not only targeted high-profile authors such as Margaret Atwood or Ethan Hawke but also collections of stories and works by first-time authors. When the manuscripts were successfully stolen, none appear to have appeared on the black market or the dark web. The ransom demands never materialized. Who was Filippo Bernardini then? An exhausted person who reacts to the very high pressure levels and the very low salary by working non-stop, 24 hours a day, to scam everyone? A poor fellow who felt isolated and had tried to console himself with a strange pastime? The last person truly and genuinely passionate about books left in the world? Berardini will defend himself (at the time of his arrest he did not have a lawyer) saying that he was trying to obtain the manuscripts for personal use. “If I think of the people in his position, I feel more than anything else understanding and tenderness, perhaps his dream was to be a translator and he didn’t find any other way”, Eva Ferri always says, adding that a million and a half books are published on Amazon every year. , there is no control over the things that are published on so many channels, “so who knows how many Filippi Bernardini there will be and there are, it is full of ambiguous situations around”.
The e-mails he sent to the editors always began in the same way, “Hello, I hope to find you well”, the tone was overly cordial and even a little submissive, full of “sorry if I disturb you”. We were sent an email in which he prostrated himself and summarized his CV «Excuse me if I didn’t introduce myself, I did a translation test for you four years ago (…). Excuse me again for the inconvenience and inconvenience caused, my mistake, and obviously I understand that through email it is difficult to remember people ». And at the end of the email: “Regarding the translation proposals, I hope to be able to collaborate with you one day, but if you consider them superfluous and it is a problem for you, please let me know”. An assistant from the talent and media agency WME told Vulture who realized that an email allegedly from her boss was fraudulent because her boss would never write “please” or “thank you”.
In the email we read, however, he apologized because he had been pointed out that he continued to bombard the publishing house with editorial proposals without ever introducing himself, “the thing that intrigued us and made us decide to meet him on Zoom was that he proposed good books or very hot titles, which they were already evaluating at that moment – we asked ourselves: but how does he know so much? An extra prompter would have been useful, especially for a publishing house that has no scouts. And then there was the curiosity to know such a genius: when asked how he had learned so many languages, he told of having learned Swedish thanks to a friend or boyfriend of his (the source does not remember well) native speaker with whom he lived in London and with whom “he watched television in Swedish, he sold it to me like this. Usually the translators, being out of the loop, propose titles already out or too niche, it is rare for a translator to be so inside the editorial dynamics, the relationships with agents and scouts. By doing the rights office of a large English publishing house, it didn’t seem so absurd, however, he himself admitted that he knew everything he knew thanks to exchanges with colleagues. In short, he seemed to me a strange guy but no stranger than many others »,» said an Italian editorial director who prefers to remain anonymous who has had several contacts with Bernardini.
In the last meeting on Zoom, which took place in 2021, however, Bernardini did not make a good impression on our source: he was a “strange” type. But strange in what sense? I spoke to people who attended university with him in London between 2015 and 2016, while he was doing his masters in publishing. “He was a person who did not go unnoticed, noisy, sometimes out of place.” He talked too much, “he didn’t have a cecio in his mouth, but in a negative sense.” Another girl who met him told me: “He was an attention seeker, I found him very unpleasant.” In appearance it was normal, “I wouldn’t have turned around the street to look at him, no.” But now, everyone would do it: because Filippo Bernardini has become famous. Who knows, maybe this was his goal. The same as any mythomaniac, or perhaps most ambitious people: to do something that pierces the flat and monotonous surface of normality and anonymity, something special, to finally be able to become the protagonist of one’s life or, even better, of a TV series about one’s life.
