The Book Bandit
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Hi, Sarah. Hey, Sachi. So much like myself, you're a bit of a book influencer as a journalist, right? Oh, yeah. I'm constantly reading books all the way through. You are famously literate. Yeah, famously can read. Right. So you probably get like a ton of advanced copies of books, correct? Yeah, it's a real hodgepodge. There are some that no disrespect to authors, but not really books I'd want to read. Yeah.

Well, what if I told you that one of the biggest scams in the history of publishing involves stealing books that publishers were giving away for free anyway? That sounds like it's something that would happen to the book industry. I mean, look, some people scam to get rich, others scam for power or revenge. But then some people scam to steal hundreds of books that they didn't even really need to steal in the first place.

And it all starts with some very weird emails. In March 2017, Linda Altrov-Bury is working at Sweden's oldest publishing house, Nordstedt. Linda's the rights director there, and she's on one of the biggest books of her career. It's the newest book from the mega bestselling Swedish author Stig Larsson. Well, sort of.

Larson actually died right before his debut crime novel became one of the best-selling books of all time, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Sarah, did you ever hear of it? Not only have I heard of it, I have read those books multiple times and I watch the movies. So yeah, you can say I'm familiar. Really bragging about knowing a piece of pop culture here. I

I am a part of that world. Okay, great. I'm really proud of you. Well, as you know, since Stieg is dead, another author is taking over his series. And this new book called The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye is a really big deal. It's like the book world equivalent of a new Marvel movie.

Linda's worked at her publisher for more than 15 years, and she knows that keeping this book's plot under wraps is crucial. Because if people hear spoilers before the book comes out, they won't buy it. And lots of people buy these books, like tens of millions of copies worldwide.

And that success is really valuable to the publishing house because those big bestsellers, like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, are what keep publishers from being in massive hordes of debt. Yeah, all these big books basically subsidize the thousands of other books that sell like 10 copies. It's how other books can get made. It's how my book got made. And I bought one of those 10 copies. Thank you for your two cents.

Well, I mean, the other thing is Swedish publishers don't often score international mega hits. So this book has to succeed. And that means taking every precaution to keep it from leaking. So when Linda has to share the manuscript with her publishing partners around the world, she uses something called Hushmail, a super secure encrypted email service. And it's password protected. The book's small army of translators have all signed NDAs.

So Linda's in her office inside this grand Victorian building in Stockholm. It's got spires and it's right on the water. It looks like a palace. And that's where she is when she and another rights agent named Catherine Merck get this email that makes them roll their eyes.

Sarah, can you read a rough translation of the email? It says, So this email is apparently from the book's Italian editor, who has somehow misplaced the link that they'd already been sent. And Linda and Catherine are obviously annoyed because this is a major screw up.

But then another email shows up, and this one's just in Catherine's inbox. It's asking for the password to open the file. Okay, so now things are getting really weird. Losing the link is one thing, but the password too? Linda thinks, mm, something's up. And she writes a separate email to the Italian editor just to check in.

And the Italian editor calls Catherine immediately. She's spooked. She says that she didn't send any emails. Actually, she's got the manuscript printed out right here on her desk. And while they're still on the phone to Italy, Catherine gets yet another email asking for the password. Yeah, that definitely sounds like a scam as a foot. Yes. And so at this point, they know that someone's trying to get the book. And when they look more carefully at the messages, a couple of things jump out.

Like, the Italian editor's signature has the wrong job title. She actually got a promotion two months ago. And the name of her publishing house is misspelled. It's a pretty clear red flag. And that's when they realize that the email address itself is also wrong. This one ends in a .com, but the publishing house uses .it, which is Italy's national domain. So now they start to panic. Who's sending these emails? Is it a hacker? A criminal syndicate?

Soon, Linda and Catherine learn that they are not the only ones dealing with emails like this. The biggest publishers across three continents are all becoming targets too. The book world is freaking out. Someone's trying to get a hold of books, hundreds of them, but no one can figure out why. And when the scammer's identity is revealed, it shocks the publishing industry. It was someone they never expected, someone they underestimated. And in some ways, he changes the industry forever. ♪

From Wondery, I'm Saatchi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And this is Scamfluencers. Sarah, I'm going to be honest with you. This week, we're covering a kind of inexplicable scam. It's one focused entirely on stealing the dorkiest of prizes.

And not just any books at like a bookstore, but like unpublished manuscripts. But look, I also love this scam. I watch the news of it unfold online through tweets and memes, and I just find it so bizarre. Like imagine being smart enough to steal shit and you decide to steal books. But it also calls into question whether the book industry has any value at all, which is something I personally love as a published author and nihilist.

In any case, I'm calling this episode The Book Bandit. Peter C. Baker is a freelance journalist in Illinois who, like the rest of us, unfortunately, has been working on a novel for 10 years.

Peter is a rugged-looking Midwestern guy, brown hair, beard, Patagonia. In the summer of 2020, he decides it's finally ready for the next step. So he sends it out to some agents. Here's what he told the writer of this episode. I only actually finally did it because I was about to become a dad and didn't want to go to the hospital without having sent it to some agents. So I did.

In July 2020, Peter signs with his new literary agent, Chris, and he becomes a dad. So Peter works with Chris to get his manuscript ready to send to editors while caring for his newborn son. He's exhausted, delirious, and excited. Then on September 20th, Peter gets an email from Chris

Here's Peter again. In this email, he was asking me if I could send him the latest version of the manuscript as a Microsoft Word file. Peter has been up all night with the baby. He's running on caffeine and a prayer that when his son does go down for a nap, he'll be able to sleep too. So Peter doesn't think twice. He finds a previous email where his manuscript was attached as a Word file, and he shoots that off to Chris.

And then he says... I get another email that appears to be an email from my agent. It says, did you send it? I didn't get it. So I did it again. And then Peter gets another email from Chris. This one says that the agency is in the process of changing servers. Maybe that's why the email isn't coming through?

And Chris asks Peter to send the manuscript to a different email. It's the exact same email, but with a .co instead of a .com at the end. Later that day, Chris calls Peter. He sounds a little panicked. He asks why Peter sent his book over multiple times. Here's Peter again.

It was known at that time, not to me, but within the world of publishing, that some person or group of people had been perpetrating deceptions of this type, not just all over town, all over the world. And that's when Chris has to tell him the bad news. Dude, you got scammed.

So it doesn't make sense to me that a scammer would want this like magazine writer's unsold debut, no offense to Peter. Like why not try and get a new Stephen King manuscript or something that is of higher value? Great question. And Peter can't really wrap his head around it either.

Listen to this. We tried to talk about what is this person's motive? What are they going to do with a word file of my manuscript? And we couldn't come up with a plausible explanation that created this sort of nauseous stomach dropping, who am I? What is this world kind of feeling?

Here's the good news. Peter went on to sell his book. It's called Planes, and it's out now. You can get it wherever unstolen books are sold. And even though he was nervous for a while, nothing actually happened with the stolen manuscript. Peter is just another victim of this prolific international book thief.

Since 2016, the scammer has targeted authors like Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Ethan Hawke, and of course, Stieg Larsson. But obscure books too, books the world hasn't exactly been clamoring for, like Icelandic short story collections written in Icelandic, have also been stolen. And no one can figure out who the scammer is or what it is that they want.

The reason that Peter's agent, Chris, is freaking out is that this scammer has been going after books since at least 2016. And they're pretty good at it. They've gotten hundreds of books under false pretenses from all over the world. And as far as phishing schemes go, this one's pretty simple. The scammer registers web domains and then they use phony email addresses that look almost like the real thing to request the book.

A lot of people don't spot the subtle difference, so they just send it, much like Peter did. But none of the books that the scammer got their hands on appear on eBay or the dark web or anywhere else. No ransom demands are ever made. There's nothing.

That is so strange. I mean, it does seem like a scam that's easy to fall for because how often are you looking at like the actual email that you're sending it to? Yeah. You just kind of glance at it and register it looks similar to what you've seen before, right? Right. Also,

Most first drafts are shit. And they change so much. It just doesn't make any sense to me. But see, this is the thing. The scammer very clearly understands how publishing works. Like, they know which agents represent which writers, which editors are buying which books, and how book scouting even works. That's how publishers often find out about books from other countries. It's pretty in-the-weeds stuff. They're imitating agents, editors, and scouts to trick people into sending their books and

and it's working. And that's what drives people like Chris insane. Could it actually be someone in their own industry? Is the call coming from inside the house? But if they are so familiar with how the book industry works, they must also know it's just not that hard to get free books. Advanced copies are incredibly common across publishing.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty easy if you just contact a PR person and say like, I want an advanced copy of this book. Yes, exactly. And I know you also know this, Sarah, the publishing industry runs on gossip. So by the time Peter's book is stolen, everybody has a theory on who the scammer might be and why they're even doing this in the first place. All the theories are wild. I'm going to tell you some of them. You can let me know what you think, okay? Okay. Okay.

One, publishing is being hit by an international crime syndicate, one that's out to pirate books. Okay, relax, nerds. Nobody cares that much. Okay, well, here's another one. Russia is stealing books to undermine the West because what better way to undo NATO and the EU than by stealing manuscripts from publishers in Sweden and France? Okay, once again, relax, nerds. Nobody cares that much. Okay, but then some people are like, it's the mob.

Because why not? You know how much the mob loves debut fiction? All of these are clearly the work of people who are like, my job is really important and books change the world. Listen, book people have an overinflated sense of self and it's really coming out and trying to figure out what's happening here. But despite all the countless irrational theories, people still don't know who's scamming writers out of their books.

Rumors about the scammer's identity are swirling all over the global publishing industry. Who would bother to hatch such a specific crime? They clearly know enough about the ins and outs of publishing. Would someone in Turtle do this to their own colleagues, to their own industry? And while the scammer is getting bolder, one writer becomes determined to crack this mystery wide open.

In February 2020, Reeves Weidemann, a journalist at New York Magazine, hears from someone in publishing. Reeves is in his 30s with brown hair and a perma five o'clock shadow. He got a start as a fact checker at The New Yorker, and now he writes about tech and the media. He's got sources in the publishing industry, and they're freaked out about this mystery scammer who's stealing manuscripts.

Reeves has already heard about this case. His colleague, Lila Shapiro, tried writing about the book thief the previous year, and she quit when her leads didn't go anywhere. But Reeves starts to poke around. The thief has never stopped scamming, so maybe there's a loose thread ready to be pulled. And then, as the pandemic causes shutdowns all over the world, Reeves hears from more and more sources. Here he is talking about it on the Read Smart podcast.

I have sort of a database as I became kind of obsessed with this of all the emails this person had sent and the books they had gone after. And it's hundreds of emails. And that's a fraction of, I'm sure, the full output. And while the emails used to be unerringly polite, now they've gotten really dark.

Like later that year when Reeves reaches out to Linda Altrove-Burry. Do you remember her? Yeah, she was a Swedish publishing employee who found out the scammer was trying to get the new Larson book, right? Correct. In August of 2020, Linda gets another strange request in her inbox. And this one's from a Spanish editor for a book that Linda knows that editor just would not care about. She realizes that she's got the thief on the line, waiting for her response.

So Linda thinks, hey, why not have some fun? Feeling just a little smug, she writes back, keep on dreaming. And she doesn't have to wait long to hear back. But the response is pretty shocking. The translation is, hope you die of the coronavirus.

That's insane. Right. And insofar as insults go, it's pretty good. It's timely and cruel. Very cruel. Reeves also hears that the thief has started taunting authors by sending them entire passages from their stolen manuscripts. That's monstrous. And they've been threatening to publicly leak the entire book, unless, of course, they're given the PDFs that they want.

They even start telling victims that they know their home addresses and that they'll pay them a visit one day soon. The idea of having to like reread something I had written before it was edited, it makes my stomach hurt. I'm actually sweating. Okay, so we understand how threatening this is. And the scammer is now sending thousands of emails in like 10 different languages. They're also registering hundreds, maybe thousands of domain names designed to fake people out.

Some of those domains were registered in the names of the people they were scamming. Plus, sometimes the scammer was using their credit cards too. It's a rapidly expanding con job. That's crazy. It ended up getting financial as well. That's like true scam siren shit. Yeah. And several people in New York tell Reeves that they think they know who the scammer is.

The English in the emails, it's a little clunky. And some think it's distinctly Italian. There is this Italian publishing professional in New York who just...

He just rubs people the wrong way. He's rude, he doesn't have that many friends, and he's known for being a bit vindictive. He's the type of person who might, you know, want revenge on an entire industry. Oh, and some of the email domains, they're actually registered in that guy's name. Okay, so I mean, they know who it is then, right? Well, word spreads that there's a suspect at least, and Reeves is excited. After months of digging, he finally has a real lead.

Reeves gets in touch with the Italian publishing guy. They have a Zoom call, and he freaks out when he finds out he's a suspect. Over the next day, he sends Reeves 64 emails laying out his defense. Mamma mia. Indeed. And he says that he doesn't have to steal books. He works in publishing, and the biggest piece of exonerating evidence is that the email address is being used to register the domains. It isn't his. It's just another fake.

So Reeves' big lead, it goes nowhere. But soon, he won't have to go hunting for the scammer anymore. The scammer comes to him, and it isn't pretty. Reeves is talking to everyone he can for his piece. His colleague, Lila, even comes back to work on it too. And soon enough, the scammer gets wind of their investigation.

And then the scammer starts sending them emails. But it all escalates really quickly. The scammer starts impersonating their agents and may have tried to access their LinkedIn and dating profile accounts. At some point, Lila, who's now eight months pregnant, exchanges emails with the thief. She suggests meeting for a drink in Cobble Hill, which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn that I cannot afford to live in. And the scammer writes back, how about fuck you, Hill?

That's so wild. And more threateningly, they reply, take my advice, drop this stupid article and stop with it immediately. Oh my God, this is crazy. Yeah. It seems like the thief is becoming downright dangerous and law enforcement is starting to get involved.

In fact, two investigations are launched, one in New York and another in D.C. And then in July of 2021, when Reeves and Lila publish their piece, they say they still don't have any idea who's scamming the book world. But they do give the thief an instantly iconic name, the Spine Collector. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's perfect. But while Reeves and Lila can't figure out the thief's identity, the FBI is making headway.

Actually, they found their man. There's just one problem. He's not American. And they'll have to wait until he's on U.S. soil before they can finally make a move. ♪

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Just use the code SCAMPOD. That's HappyMammoth.com M-A-M-M-O-T-H with the code SCAMPOD to get 15% off your entire first order. Sarah, I'm going to take you back in time a bit to October 1st, 2008.

A strange book appears on the shelves of Italian bookstores. Its author is Filippo B. Its cover is a silhouette of a teen boy with gelled hair, a popped collar, baggy jeans. And the book's title is Bully, which means the same thing in English as it does in Italian. So Bully tells the story of Diego, a shy teen living in an unnamed suburb of Rome. His parents are divorced and he's struggling to fit in at school.

His classmates tear into him because he looks, acts, and dresses like a dork. And he loves just two things, books and the internet. A loser, Likers truly. And yet, Diego is also special. He's brilliant. He's so brilliant that he gets his hands on a copy of the final Harry Potter book before anybody else does.

But despite pulling that off, he still remains an outcast. So he figures he's got no choice but to become a bully, just like everybody else. So that, quote, everyone will like me because the truth is that I am better than them. That's really dark. And it also is really sad. Yeah.

Well, Filippo B is the not-so-subtle gnome de plume of Filippo Bernardini, a bookish, awkward Italian kid, much like his main character, Diego. And also like Diego, Filippo was raised by divorced parents in an elegant medieval suburb of Rome. Another trait they share is that Filippo seems pretty convinced that he's superior to everyone around him.

After all, he published Bully, his debut novel, when he was still just a teenager. Now, Bully is basically the diary of a lonely outcast. Filippo is so angry at his classmates that in the book, he uses their full names. So this is essentially fan fiction of his real life. Yeah. And the lesson of the book is pretty dark. Sarah, can you read this particularly telling passage for us?

There is a relationship between tormentors and victims, something close to a real friendship or even love. A person cannot live without others just as a tormentor cannot live without his victim. Imagine writing that down. This is clearly a teen who's experiencing a lot of shit in their life. Yeah. And by publishing a book, Filippo hopes to get the recognition and praise that he craves. It doesn't exactly work.

As of this recording, it's only got three middling reviews on Amazon. But it seems to have inspired Filippo to pursue a career in the book world. So after school, Filippo moves to Milan, the capital of Italy's publishing industry. And he's determined to chart a course for literary stardom. It's the fall of 2010. Filippo's going to school at Milan's Università Cattolica.

It's this gorgeous school inside the city's ancient walls with roots tracing back to the 8th century. It's exactly the type of cultural pedigree and prestige that Filippo is after. Filippo's setting himself up for a career in publishing. He's got a real gift for languages, so he studies Mandarin and English, and he considers becoming a translator. While in school, he works as a proofreader at the small but prestigious publishing house that put out Bulleat.

And this is where he discovers one of publishing's greatest perks, free copies of books months before they come out. Remember when you were young and not jaded and the idea of free books forever sounded so cool?

Yeah, it was enough to be like, I will accept these poverty wages if I get to read books for free. Yeah, we were stupid. Well, five years later in 2015, Filippo sets off for London. He's getting a master's in publishing at the University College London. It's the next best stepping stone for a career in the industry. And he's a good student. But the cocky and spiteful author of Bully is still in there.

Sarah, can you read what one classmate told New York Magazine about Filippo? Yeah. He was loud, boisterous. Nothing would really daunt him. My lasting impression of him was how confident but borderline rude he was. Wow, sounds like a guy in publishing. Ha ha.

He could be anybody. Well, at this point, Filippo's in his early 20s. He's got a wide smile, a prominent forehead, and he wears big square glasses. And he's still just a student, but he wants a glamorous life. So he goes to posh events in London, especially movie premieres.

In October 2016, he spends the evening fawning over celebrities walking the red carpet at the premiere of Arrival, the Denis Villeneuve sci-fi movie. Denis and Jeremy Renner wave as they pass by, screaming fan snap photos from behind the barricades. But Filippo? He only has eyes for Amy Adams.

He takes a picture on his phone and later posts it to Instagram. Sarah, can you read his caption? He writes, I will say I appreciate him measuring in meters. That's very close to Amy Adams. He also boasts to classmates about spending a thousand pounds a week on groceries.

He posts photos on Instagram of the elaborate meals he cooks with his new partner, who has a job in corporate compliance. I'm sorry, how do you spend a thousand pounds a week on groceries? I have no idea. I could not do that if I tried. We should do an episode on that. Yeah, he probably is getting scammed. But he's also still fixated on the same goal he's had since his emo teen novelist days, literary stardom.

During this time, his Instagram is full of pictures of galleys, which, as you know, are advanced copies of books. There are huge books by internationally famous authors like Jonathan Franzen and Nick Hornby. He even gets an early copy of Ghosts at a Watchman, which is Harper Lee's surprise prequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.

And don't worry, he makes sure to include hashtag uncorrected proof, hashtag advanced reader's copy, hashtag not out yet. Just so all the plebs know that he's getting the good stuff before everybody else. If it's literary stardom that Filippo wants, or just plain stardom, he's getting closer. But he's not yet close enough.

Filippo scores a major coup around this time in 2016, an internship at Andrew Nurnberg Associates. That's one of the UK's most renowned literary agencies. This is the kind of gig that can really open doors in publishing. And on paper, he's exactly what agencies and publishers are looking for. Filippo's already published a book, he's worked for an Italian publishing house, and he's in the process of completing a master's degree in publishing, which is a

He's fluent in at least three languages, Italian, English, and Chinese. Okay, here's the thing. Filippo is talented. He might not be the best writer, but he's clearly hardworking. He's clearly someone who is trying to get somewhere. I just don't understand where the scam starts taking place or why. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously a lot of ego wrapped up in this, but his time at Nuremberg, it's a wet, hot disaster, man. Yeah.

Filippo feels like intern work is beneath him. One agent walks in on him spinning around in a chair and asks him to tidy up bookshelves. And Filippo looks at him and says, "'That's too boring.'"

This is the problem with Filippo throughout all of this. He expects his genius to be recognized immediately. When that doesn't happen, he loses it. He wants to get hired at the agency, but they reject him, obviously. So he stands outside of the building screaming at the company's agents and employees as they walk in and out.

He's rumored to have consulted an attorney about a lawsuit, supposedly because he thought that the company was bad-mouthing him to potential employers. Oh, and also, not long after he left Nuremberg, the company's website was hacked, and somebody put up personal information about their agents along with some nasty comments. Hmm, who could that have been? He's not very subtle. Filippo came to London for a career in the capital of European publishing.

And for confirmation that he really was special. Not only special, but more special than everyone around him. And now all that seems to be slipping through his fingers. So he comes up with an audacious scheme to raise his profile and to get revenge on the establishment that has shunned him. He decides to start stealing books, allegedly. Allegedly.

So Filippo supposedly started around this time in 2016. He begins living a double life again, allegedly. By day, he's on the bottom rung of the publishing ladder. And after blowing up his internship, Filippo's back to striving, reading manuscripts and writing reports, sometimes for as little as 50 pounds each. But by night, he's becoming a prolific scammer.

He scours publishing news reports for potential victims. He registers hundreds of domain names. He even creates a fake homepage for a database used by a scouting agency.

He used that to collect emails and passwords so he could monitor some publishing professionals' correspondence. So, I mean, he kind of has two jobs at this point, one of which he is not getting paid for. Yeah. Again, allegedly. In real life, Filippo's just another underpaid cog in the publishing machine. Meanwhile, the book thief is a growing menace, causing waves with book people all over the world.

It sounds like he's kind of also maybe romanticizing this idea of being a nobody on the surface that no one would look at twice. And then on the other side, hacking into people's emails. That is what it sort of seems like. And then in 2020, he gets two big breaks.

One, a stable job in Simon & Schuster, UK's foreign rights department. And two, he gets traction with a translation, in Italian, of the Korean writer Cho Nam-ju's Kim Ji-young, born in 1982. It's successful enough to get Filippo the job of translating a forthcoming book by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. But this is when the book thief grows more deranged and threatening. He also starts scamming other low-level publishing hopefuls, people like him.

That is so crazy. It's like he's finally getting success and now he's targeting people who have no power at all. Yeah. And posing as an editor or an agent, he would offer young aspiring professionals a job reading a manuscript. Basically, he would ask them to read a book and then write a report summarizing it for the offensively low going rate of 150 bucks. And after they turned in the report, which would often take dozens of hours of work,

He would just ghost them. Why? Like, why do that? It's so useless and so evil. It benefits no one. Yeah, I don't know why. By 2020, the publishing industry is onto the thief. He's getting found out more frequently by the people he's trying to scam. And they're raising the alarm with authorities in the U.S.,

But he's also getting more brazen. He's stealing manuscripts from publishers he's worked with or pitched himself to as a translator. He's impersonating people he's actually met before and then threatening some of them later when they try to expose him. He's been growing bolder and bolder, always thinking he was one step ahead. But he doesn't realize that the FBI is on the case. In fact, they've known his identity for months and they're starting to close in.

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On January 5th, 2022, a 29-year-old Italian man wearing big square glasses steps off a plane from London at JFK Airport in New York. It's Filippo Bernardini, and he's here for a post-Christmas vacation. But as soon as he steps off the plane, he's swarmed by FBI agents. He's charged with wire fraud and identity theft, charges that could lead to up to 22 years in federal prison.

That is a lot of time for a very weird scam, but he did hack into people's emails. He did use credit cards, so I kind of get it. Right. And it's not like it was that easy to catch him either. The FBI has been building a case for more than a year. The lead investigator on the case is Michael Driscoll, a 25-year veteran of the agency and a former lawyer. He is no joke. He worked counterterrorism in Africa and England, and he went after Al-Qaeda in 2003.

He's got expertise in international investigations, which is now being used to track down a dorky but super intense low-level publishing employee.

It's not exactly Osama bin Laden. So when the news of the arrest breaks, publishers are confronted by a surprising and uncomfortable truth. The scammer who's been plaguing them for years, causing an international brouhaha, it isn't some sophisticated criminal syndicate. Nor is it the intelligence arm of a country hostile to the West.

It's a lone individual, a junior employee, the exact type of person most people in the industry spend their days ignoring, if not outright abusing.

Many insisted in the weeks after Filippo's arrest that he must have been working for someone else. I mean, how else could he have sent all those emails? You know, it is not surprising to imagine publishers being shocked by this. Like, as you said earlier, they thought it was like this huge criminal conspiracy because everyone cares about publishing so much that they probably couldn't at any point look inward and be like, hey, we're an industry that really underpays people majorly.

Maybe it's a disgruntled former employee. Yeah, exactly. But some people in publishing were less surprised. Because for the underpaid and overworked, Filippo's elaborate and kind of pointless quest for revenge ignites a reckoning in the industry.

Filippo Bernardini's anger and frustration towards publishing was threatening to many, but it struck a chord with some. Specifically, the overworked, underpaid interns, assistants, and associates who make the industry run. For junior employees, here was someone hitting back at bad bosses, impersonating and terrifying them. He was beating them at their own game of gossipy, clicky power moves. Within days, meme accounts on Instagram were all over it.

But in Italy, meanwhile, the arrest was greeted with a mix of national pride and a type of cruel irony. One article in the Italian press spent several paragraphs comparing him to the talented Mr. Ripley because of the complexity of the scam. But it went on to note that he was neither rich nor particularly handsome.

Italian journalist Clara Mazzaleni wrote a pretty perfect and pretty devastating summary. Sarah, will you read it? She says, 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. Absolutely. There's just something deeply uncool about this scam where it's like,

Okay, all this for books? For books. I know, man. I mean, this scam has no sex appeal. Well, if found guilty, it would mean that he stole hundreds, if not thousands, of manuscripts. He impersonated and violated the privacy of dozens of individuals. Some public figures, but mostly just regular people. He pulled off a complex, sophisticated international scam that humiliated some of the most powerful people in the international publishing industry.

Okay, what I'm wondering is outside of some of the fraud he did with, you know, getting people's credit card information and also hacking into people's emails, what did he actually do? Like, what was the crime? Well, here's what Mike Driscoll at the FBI said about the crime. It is just so mean, I need you to read it. Okay.

Mr. Bernardini was allegedly trying to steal other people's literary ideas for himself, but in the end, he wasn't creative enough to get away with it. Oof. Imagine that being like an official report that somebody makes about your crime, that you're just not smart enough to have done anything better. What a dunk. But...

There's just one problem with this explanation. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, even if Filippo was trying to steal the ideas, he would be months behind. The books he stole were often weeks away from publication. So by the time he could put something together, he would be years too late. And now Filippo is facing decades in prison, but there's still no evidence that he profited from the scam. None of the manuscripts ever showed up on torrenting websites.

There's no reason to believe that they were used in any type of pirating. And it might just be that he's always been the same lonely kid who wrote a confessional novel in 2008, desperately seeking to prove that he was just a little bit better than everyone else. When Peter C. Baker heard that Filippo Bernardini was arrested and charged with being the book thief, he was shocked too.

And a little relieved. I will admit it felt kind of good to know that this was happening to more people, not just me. You know, it could happen to anyone and wasn't proof of my special, unique dumbness. And though the book thief never profited off of stealing novels, Peter can attest to the fact that this was not a victimless crime. Having your manuscript stolen sucks. It always feels bad to get sort of tricked or scammed.

even if it's not touching on a 10-year creative project that you have foolishly wrapped up your identity with? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, his book still got published, but there is this idea of getting fooled by someone when you're working in such a precarious industry where it's like, it's so hard to get a book deal. And it's so hard for a book to do well once you actually do get that deal. So I feel like

playing with people's emotions like that is so cruel. And also, he didn't really benefit from that at all. No, he just did it to be a jerk.

But between being scammed by the book thief and learning about the arrest, Peter's book had sold and been published. So he found it kind of hard to be angry. Instead, he took the chance to reflect. The shared international enterprise of contemporary literature was, for me as for him, like the place where I wanted to do my thing, to show the world what I could do to have my work received and seen and responded to.

I don't think it's too implausible to say that he wanted something like that, too. That's a very empathetic lens, I guess. Yeah, I think Peter seems to really understand that there are a lot of ego monsters in this industry and everyone's like acting out in different ways. Yeah, totally. Well, Filippo has pleaded not guilty and is currently awaiting trial in New York, where he has remained under bond since early January. And the good news is it sounds like he's going to have a lot to read.

So this whole story, actually, I feel like it just calls into question what a scam even is.

Like, does someone have to benefit financially for it to count as a scam? I don't think so. I mean, I think he had like an ultimate goal of being financially successful with this, but he just like cheated and played with people's minds and he scammed them in a pretty evil way. Yeah, but the weird thing is his motives are still a mystery. Like, why go to this extraordinary amount of effort just to steal PDFs?

Why would he choose to enact revenge in a way that gets him, honestly, less than nothing? I think I won't be able to get over this scam because it was truly so pointless. It was really just a way to cause chaos and unrest in an industry that wasn't rewarding you. Right.

The book industry is so small and sort of in the same way that he was trafficking in the gossip of the book industry, he could have trafficked in the gossip of being a nice person and it could have really changed his trajectory. You know what it is? He was so entitled. Yeah. He was like this guy who was bullied as a kid who thought like, I'm smarter than everyone. And I think once he tried making it, he realized it's very hard to become famous in this industry. And I think he just couldn't handle that.

Well, Sarah, you know what I always say. Never try. Let things kind of just happen to you. That's how we got this podcast. Truly, if you just lie very still like an iguana about to be attacked, good things will come. You know, I feel like the lesson here is that most people can smell desperation. You got to play cool to be cool. I've never tried in my life. Why start now?

This is our series, The Book Bandit. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. We use many sources in our research. Reeves Weidemann and Lila Shapiro's The Spine Collector and their follow-up, The Talented Mr. Bernardini in New York Magazine were particularly helpful. Elizabeth A. Harris and Nicole Pearl Roth wrote the first story about the scammer for the New York Times and later broke the news of Bernardini's arrest.

Alex Shepard wrote this episode, which includes original reporting as well as information from his story about Bernardini and the New Republic, the bizarre unsolved mystery of Filippo Bernardini and the stolen book manuscripts. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Jen Swan is our senior producer. John Reed is our producer. Charlotte Miller and Tate Busby are our associate producers. Sarah Enney is our story editor.

Our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freeze On Sync. Adrian Tapia provided audio assistance. Our sound design is by James Morgan. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelow, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Wondery.

If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.