From The Authors Guild:
As we reported a few months ago to members, authors have fallen prey to several scams, including one in which a person claimed to work with an author’s publishing house to gain access to that author’s unpublished manuscript.
The New York Times today reported that, after five long years, an arrest has been made on allegations of wire fraud and identity theft. Picked up when he arrived at New York’s JFK airport, the FBI arrested Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen, whose social media profile claims he works for Simon & Schuster UK’s rights division.
As we previously reported, the accused would send out emails “impersonating real people working in the publishing industry — a specific editor, for example — by using fake email addresses.” He would employ slightly tweaked domain names like penguinrandornhouse.com instead of penguinrandomhouse.com, — putting an “rn” in place of an “m.” According to the indictment, Bernardini had registered more than 160 fraudulent internet domains impersonating publishing professionals and companies.
Link to the rest at The Authors Guild
The person who collected all these manuscripts doesn’t seem to have used them.
Just wants to know he has them?
Or maybe got caught before he could really get going.
I see this as someone who wants the manuscripts to sell to other Worldlines where those authors do not exist. Think The Mandela Effect or the series Counterpart.
Top 20 Mind-Blowing Examples of the Mandela Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkO9zO62k-w
Counterpart | Official Trailer Starring J.K. Simmons | STARZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Bu2DOM66g