The scammer was dubbed “The Spine Collector” in a magazine investigation, which tried unsuccessfully to reveal their identity.

In 2019, Ms Atwood’s publisher, agent and several others associated with her received fake requests for a copy of The Testaments, the eagerly-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. 

The attempt failed, but it prompted such panic that early review copies were issued under fake titles, manuscripts were not shared with international partners until the English-language publication, and copies issued to Booker Prize judges were locked in drawers.

The Grand Jury charges allege that between 2016 and July 2021, Mr Bernardini “engaged in a scheme to fraudulently obtain valuable pre-publication manuscripts of novels and other forthcoming books, as well as synopses and other notes and reports related to unpublished books”.

He allegedly did this by creating “lookalike” email addresses – for example, replacing the letter “m” in penguinrandom.house.com with “rn”, a tiny adjustment which recipients could easily overlook.

‘Real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale’

According to prosecutors, Mr Bernardini registered more than 160 fraudulent internet domains that impersonated real individuals or companies. All would automatically forward replies to a single email address that he controlled.

It is also alleged that he created fake web pages to impersonate the landing page of a New York literary scouting company, which sources books on behalf of international clients and film companies.

The indictment says that Mr Bernardini devised the scheme for the purposes of “obtaining money and property by means of false and fraudulent pretenses”.

However, the motive for the crimes remains obscure, particularly as some of the authors targeted were little-known or debut novelists. No ransom demands were made, and the manuscripts were never pirated.

Some have suggested that the thief simply had a vendetta against the industry.

Catherine Mörk, publisher of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, received one of the phishing emails. 

Ms Mörk told the New York website Vulture: “We assumed it was the Russians. But we are the book industry. It’s not like we’re digging gold or researching vaccines.”

Catherine Eccles, owner of the scouting agency Eccles Fisher Associates, raised the alarm about the scam in 2018.

“We were very wise to it,” she said. “We first started getting targeted around the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2018.”

Michael J Driscoll, assistant director-in-charge of the New York office of the FBI, said: “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.”

Damian Williams, US attorney, said: “This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Bernardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds.”

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster said the publisher was “shocked and horrified” by the allegations. Mr Bernardini has been suspended.