Journalist Michael Moynihan from The Daily Beast is claiming that Roberto Saviano's book "Zero Zero Zero," which chronicles the rise of the rambling drug underworld and the "an international narco-state," as per the description for the book, "contains numerous instances of unambiguous plagiarism." He said that the book, which was released back in July, is "astonishingly dishonest."

Moynihan, who was the same journalist that revealed how New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for his bestselling book "Imagine: how creativity works," said in a lengthy Daily Beast article that the writings came right out of websites and publications such as Wikipedia, Los Angeles Times, St Petersburg Times and several more papers.

He also claimed that the sources in the interviews mentioned on the book "may not exist" and that Saviano completely "cannibalized" from a Committee to Protect Journalists 2009 report when writing about the killing of Mexican journalist Bladimir Antuna Garcia. In his article, Moynihan enumerated other specifics in the book that Saviano allegedly plagiarized.

At one point, Moynihan wrote, "Saviano occasionally allows for some ambiguity as to whose reporting he's passing along to readers. For instance, describing the Mexican drug gang Los Zetas's internal structure, he writes that 'Mexican and American sources' have revealed that 'there is a precise division of duties within Los Zetas, each with its own name.'"

He then cites that what Saviano claims in the book have originated from his sources is similar to that of a Los Zetas entry in Wikipedia dated 2008, as if he just extracted it from there. Moynihan had a lot more to point out after this. After all this, the indicted award-winning author breaks his silence and answers to his accuser.

"None of the characters that you met in Zero Zero Zero were invented. Every one of them, from the first to the last, is real," Saviano wrote in an article published by Italian newspaper La Repubblica in response to Moynihan's claims, adding that the plagiarism accusations are merely engineered to "delegitimize" him.

"The method is the chronicle, the result is literature. The reader reads a novel in which everything happened. It is called a non-fiction novel," Saviano further wrote. "I'm not a journalist (or a reporter), but, rather, a writer and I recount real facts," he continued, pointing out that sourcing isn't necessary for a novel, not to mention one that is under the non-fiction category.