Andrew was sued in New York by Virginia Giuffre, who said he raped her when she was a teenager. The trial could cloud the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 70-year reign.
Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll look at a decision by the judge presiding over a lawsuit against Prince Andrew, a friend of the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. We’ll also look at a publishing-industry mystery that has the makings of a real page-turner.
The judge in Virginia Giuffre’s suit turned down Prince Andrew’s request to dismiss the case, clearing the way for a trial, probably in the fall.
My colleague Benjamin Weiser writes that Andrew’s lawyers had argued in court papers that he had no liability because Giuffre had agreed to a settlement with Jeffrey Epstein in a separate case in Florida in 2009. But Judge Lewis Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan said that — for now — he was rejecting Andrew’s argument that he had been released from future lawsuits under the Florida settlement. Epstein also paid Giuffre $500,000 as part of that settlement.
Andrew has not been charged with any crimes and has denied Giuffre’s accusations. His name was mentioned from time to time during the recent sex-trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion. She was widely seen as a proxy defendant for Epstein, who was found hanged in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting his own trial. His death was ruled a suicide.
Giuffre’s attorney, David Boies, said his client was pleased with Judge Kaplan’s decision. A lawyer for Andrew, the Duke of York, did not respond to a request for comment, and Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
But the reaction in London was immediate. The Evening Standard online called the decision “a huge blow for Prince Andrew,” and The Daily Mail said that Andrew “now faces a hugely expensive and reputation-shredding court case” unless he and Giuffre can agree on a settlement.
The Evening Standard also said that “the institution of the monarchy is likely to be damaged” by a trial, a particular concern as Queen Elizabeth prepares to celebrate her 70 years on the throne. As my colleague Mark Landler noted last week, Andrew has cast a shadow over the royals that could undercut the palace’s efforts to spotlight the queen’s long reign and play up the pageantry.
Weather
Enjoy this partly sunny day in the mid-40s. Clouds will move in at night when temps drop to the low 30s.
alternate-side parking
In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King’s Birthday).
Fire
In the neighborhood, the Bronx apartment building where 17 people died on Sunday was known as Touray Tower, for Abdoulie Touray, a Gambian who moved in more than 40 years ago. He made the building a magnet for other immigrants from Gambia, and for many, it was a safe haven — until Sunday, when, officials said, a space heater caught fire and deadly smoke spread. Nearly all the victims were of Gambian or West African descent. Touray died in 2019 at age 81 of heart failure, but as many as 50 relatives were living in the building when the fire broke out.
The three companies that own the building, officially known as Twin Parks North West, have been aggressive in acquiring apartment complexes with lower-income tenants. The three companies bought the Twin Parks building for $166 million in a deal for seven affordable-housing buildings in the Bronx in 2019. In the aftermath of the fire, two tenants who survived sued the owners, saying that self-closing doors malfunctioned, that there were issues with smoke alarms that frequently went off and that the owners did not provide adequate heat.
The continuing Rikers crisis: A look inside
A gang leader ordered two men to fight in a Rikers Island jail cell in October. They did. A correction officer standing nearby watched without intervening.
Last month Justice April Newbauer of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered the release of a man who had been forced to participate in the “fight night,” saying the Department of Correction had failed to protect him. The Times obtained surveillance-camera video gathered by New York County Defender Services as part of the man’s petition to go free.
The latest New York news
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Amid concerns about nepotism, Bernard Adams, the mayor’s brother, will become executive director of mayoral security, not deputy police commissioner.
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Michael Lang, one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969, died on Saturday.
A scam that targeted writers
You can imagine how your favorite mystery writer would turn this into something publishable: A scam that involved a fraudster who impersonated publishing-industry types and sent fake emails to authors, editors, agents and literary scouts. The emails asked for unpublished manuscripts, which many unsuspecting targets sent.
Last week, the F.B.I. said it had cracked the case. Agents arrested Filippo Bernardini, a 29-year-old rights coordinator for Simon & Schuster UK, who had just gotten off a plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport. I asked my colleague Elizabeth A. Harris to explain.
You first wrote about this scam a year ago. When did the phishing start?
I learned about it sometime in 2020, but the scam had been going on for years already at that point. According to the indictment, it’s been going on for at least five years.
How did you hear about it?
From a source. Somebody called me who works in publishing and basically said, “The weirdest thing is happening. People are being hacked, but nothing ever happens.”
What I thought was, let me call someone who knows about hacking, that’s what I thought. I called Nicole Perlroth, who covers cybersecurity. I had known Nicole for years. And so we worked on it together.
What books were targeted? What publishing houses? Was there any apparent rhyme or reason?
Everybody was targeted — really famous novelists like Margaret Atwood, celebrities like Ethan Hawke and things like debut short story collections which would have no monetary value on the dark web.
Understand the Allegations Against Prince Andrew
Royal troubles. A sexual-abuse lawsuit against Prince Andrew, that has surfaced his ties Jeffrey Epstein, have cast a shadow over the British royal family. Here’s what to know:
Why would someone do this? It seems like a lot of effort for no apparent payoff.
No one really knows the answer. The prosecutors theorize that maybe he was doing it to steal ideas he could pass off as his own, but that doesn’t really make sense. Publishing a book takes time. If he were to rip off somebody’s idea, by the time whatever he wrote came out, the original already would have been published.
Some other possible explanations make more sense, like he did it to get a leg up at work by showing himself to be really in the know, but this was a really extreme level of in the know. And, working where he worked, for most manuscripts he could call someone up and just ask for one.
For all that, though, wasn’t it a relatively low-tech scam?
Even if technologically it’s not that complicated to create a new domain or set up a fake email address, you have to write all the emails and know the people you are targeting. He was deliberate about impersonating — he was careful to sound like the person he was claiming to be when he was talking to a particular author or a particular editor. This clearly required some research and time. Every little request was tailored for what he was looking for.
What’s the takeaway?
There’s basic security hygiene that a lot of people don’t do.
I’m curious to see what happens in the publishing industry in terms of precautions. Will there be more encryption? More digital moats to protect stuff? Manuscripts are routinely emailed back and forth. Will that stop?
What we’re reading
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Gothamist reported on how high schoolers in New York City staged a walkout to demand remote learning.
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Curbed wrote about the “Forever Wild” Forest Park in Queens and how it persists, despite a plan to turn a corner of it into a parking lot.
METROPOLITAN diary
Too many things
Dear Diary:
I was on the Q at 8 a.m. making my daily commute from Park Slope to Times Square.
As it approached the Manhattan Bridge, the train stopped abruptly, as it always does. My friends and I call it the “East River” stop.
The train was quite packed on this particular morning, and I was crammed in against one of the doors next to a man in a red sweatsuit.
Directly in front us was another man who was wearing a suit and trying to nibble on a croissant, read and sip his hot coffee all at the same time. As he went in for a precarious second sip, the man next to me spoke up.
“You’re trying to do too many things, bro, too many things,” he shouted. “I swear to God if you get coffee on these shoes, man …”
The man in the suit stopped immediately and looked over with a shocked expression on his face.
I couldn’t help laughing because the guy in the sweatsuit had just said what we were all thinking.
No coffee was spilled.
— Amanda Cordisco
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero, Ed Shanahan and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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