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From New York Times: Why Would Someone Steal Unpublished Manuscripts?
For more than five years, someone was stealing unpublished book manuscripts from editors, agents, authors and literary scouts. The question of who was behind the scheme baffled the publishing industry, but just as perplexing was another question: Why?
Most unpublished manuscripts would be almost impossible to monetize, so it wasn’t clear why somebody would bother to take them. Filippo Bernardini, who has pleaded guilty in a fraud case in which the government said he stole more than 1,000 manuscripts, offered an explanation on Friday in a letter addressed to a federal judge.
Bernardini said he stole the books because he wanted to read them.
Bernardini told Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that his scheme began after a literary agency where he had interned declined to hire him for an open position. He was applying for jobs without success when he started impersonating publishing professionals over email.
Read full post on the New York Times