MPs targeted in sexting scam

As if MPs didn’t have enough security threats to consider just now, a growing number of Westminster staff have raised concerns about being caught up in a phishing operation. 13 men have now come forward after receiving intimate and rather salacious messages from suspicious mobile numbers. Behind the messages, foreign affairs committee chair Alicia Kearns believes, is ‘almost certainly a foreign state’.

A Labour MP and a current government minister are among the targets, as well as a Tory backbencher, a former MP, a manager of an APPG, a former SpAd, four party staffers, two political journalists and a broadcaster. The scammers, going by the names of either ‘Charlie’ or ‘Abi’ according to Politico, took a similar approach with each victim that they contacted between October and March: first, they would reveal rather personal knowledge of their targets’ lives, then move on to what the affected government minister termed ‘flirty’ conversations — before, in some cases, even sending explicit images.