It's a very strange experience for a writer to see how one of the worst leeches of the world of books, Filippo Bernardini, got away with his theft of unpublished works, e.g. by a well-known author like Margaret Atwood. By pretending to be a legitimate publisher/employee he got access to many unpublished scripts of both newbie authors and established ones, and he is supposed to have stolen more than 1000 manuscripts. HOW did he avoid prison for something like that??? To me, that is something quite incomprehensable because each script represents work by an author: Time spent, ideas, and the writing itself don't float around in a workless sphere, but takes dedication and stamina, just like e.g. harvesting by a farmer. The sentence of Filippo Bernardini only was for a much deserved deportation as well as restitution money to the biggest name in publishing, Penguin House: $88,000.
To be able to steal the unpublished manuscripts he impersonated publishing professionals, which also makes him an "identity thief". It's amazing - as well as scary - that he succeeded in this scheme for quite a long time: From 2016 until his arrest in 2022. In my opinion committing aggravated identity theft should have landed him in jail, and the theft should have kept him there: Both the stealing of manuscripts and the identity theft should have been punished by the law, and I feel that the authors and the publishing world as such were let down by the judicial world.
https://www.vulture.com/2023/03/book-thief-filippo-bernardini-gets-no-jail-time-deported.htmlhttps://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59893035
https://nypost.com/2023/03/10/book-thief-filippo-bernardini-claims-love-of-reading-drove-him-to-steal/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/24/book-fraudster-filippo-bernardini-spared-jail
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64197625
Wikipedia
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