An Italian citizen, used in London’s publishing market, has refuted costs that he fraudulently received unpublished manuscripts by impersonating other men and women on the web.
The United States Section of Justice unsealed an indictment on January 5 accusing 29-calendar year-outdated Filippo Bernardini of employing digital deception to amass the unpublished manuscripts of hundreds of books.
“Filippo Bernardini allegedly impersonated publishing business people today in purchase to have authors, which includes a Pulitzer Prize winner, send out him prepublication manuscripts for his individual gain,” said US lawyer Damian Williams.
Protect and backup your data using AOMEI Backupper. AOMEI Backupper takes secure and encrypted backups from your Windows, hard drives or partitions. With AOMEI Backupper you will never be worried about loosing your data anymore.
Get AOMEI Backupper with 72% discount from an authorized distrinutor of AOMEI: SerialCart® (Limited Offer).
➤ Activate Your Coupon Code
It is alleged that from at minimum August 2016 by means of July 2021, Bernardini made phony email accounts which he used to impersonate genuine literary talent businesses, publishing houses and literary scouts.
“Bernardini produced these accounts by registering more than 160 internet domains that ended up crafted to be confusingly similar to the true entities that they have been impersonating, together with only insignificant typographical mistakes that would be tricky for the regular receiver to id in the course of a cursory evaluation,” stated the US Attorney’s Place of work for the Southern District of New York in a statement.
1 tactic allegedly utilized by Bernardini was to change the letter’ m’ used in a real area title with the decreased-circumstance letters’ r’ and ‘n’ when registering a seem-alike area.
Reportedly among the listing of individuals allegedly defrauded by Bernardini are American actor, director and screenwriter Ethan Hawke, and renowned creator of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
Bernardini is even more accused of phishing two workforce of a New York Town-based literary scouting firm to achieve entry to a database preserved by that organization.
The defendant was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 5. He was billed with just one depend of wire fraud and a single count of aggravated identification theft.
Adhering to the allegations, Bernardini was suspended from his position at the UK arm of the American publishing company and ViacomCBS subsidiary, Simon & Schuster.
In a statement released Wednesday, Simon & Schuster stated it was “shocked and horrified” by Bernardini’s alleged crimes.
On Thursday, Bernardini entered a plea of not guilty before Manhattan federal court docket. Judge Lewis Liman set bail at $300,000 and claimed Bernardini could be unveiled when he experienced been positioned under electronic checking.
Some elements of this post are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-magazine.com