Manuscript Thief of 1,000 Unpublished Books Will Not Receive Prison Time

For years, hundreds of high-profile manuscripts — including aboriginal versions of books by Margaret Atwood and Sally Rooney — were stolen successful a phishing scheme. The astir puzzling portion of the lawsuit was that thing seemed to travel from these thefts; uthe manuscripts were not leaked oregon sold, arsenic acold arsenic anyone could tell. So wherefore spell to the occupation of impersonating a steadfast successful bid to get these manuscripts?

Last year, we yet recovered retired the idiosyncratic down the theft of astir 1,000 unpublished books: Filippo Bernardini. But that didn’t code the bigger questions astir the case.

Bernardini has present gone to tribunal and pleaded blameworthy to ligament fraud. His lawyer, Jennifer Brown, argued for a airy sentence, saying helium grew up lonely, often bullied for being gay, and recovered refuge successful books.

Bernardini said helium “wanted to support them intimately to my thorax and beryllium 1 of the fewest to cherish them earlier anyone else, earlier they ended up successful bookshops” and that speechmaking them astatine this signifier felt similar having a “special and unsocial transportation with the author, astir similar I was the exertion of that book.”

The statement worked, successful that Filippo Bernardini volition not beryllium going to jail. He volition beryllium deported to the UK oregon Italy, however, and indispensable wage $88,000 to Penguin Random House to screen their ineligible fees.