UK PM duped by scammer posing as Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff

Last week, an email landed in my inbox.

It was from none other than Jeff Bezos. The Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame.

In it, Bezos announced he wanted to “inform the world of my intention to give out my Fortune (sic) of $124 Billion (sic) of my wealth”.

At first blush, one might read the message and wonder why one of the world’s richest men a) has a limited understanding of how the English language works and b) doesn’t use spellcheck.

But look, Bezos is a busy man; he’s also a very famous man, which, I reasoned, is clearly why his email address was [email protected] and not something more on brand, like, say, [email protected].

Again, whomst am I to poo-poo someone’s generosity?

And so I can sympathise with Andy Burnham, the British Prime Minister, who entered into an exchange with someone claiming to be US President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles.

Only it wasn’t Wiles.

It was a scammer.

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‘Reply above dotted line’

Look, one would assume that a Cambridge-educated politician who has attained the highest political office in the country might possess the nous to double-check such precarious communications.

Apparently not.

Burnham has since said all politicians face “these challenges” (what?) but insisted he did “everything right” in handling the security breach, adding there had been a “minimal exchange of information of zero consequence”.

Which is comforting. Except, of course, we can’t really know that for sure.

Perhaps not all the possible Consequences have finished consequence-ing yet.

Nothing to see here

It is understood the communication between Burnham and the person posing as Wiles took the form of messages.

Messages, plural.

Meaning Burnham replied and there was more than one message in the exchange.

Asked if he was embarrassed about the incident, Burnham told broadcasters: “No, I am not because there was a minimal exchange, nothing of consequence and quickly I realised that this needed to be reported and I did so.

“So I handled it in the right way. All politicians are receiving these pressures and these challenges, but I did everything right.”

Five stars. No notes.

Lord, grant us the confidence of a UK Prime Minister who just got scammed

There is, however, a slightly less amusing part to all of this.

On Monday, Downing Street declined to say when the messages were exchanged, how many there were, or whether the conversation took place over WhatsApp or another platform.

Those details matter because this isn’t Jeff Bezos promising a journalist $124 billion from a German email address.

This is someone successfully impersonating a senior White House official and establishing direct communication with the British Prime Minister.

The fact the exchange was apparently brief is reassuring. The fact it happened at all is rather less so.

And while Burnham says nothing consequential was exchanged, the public is being asked to take that assessment largely on trust because Downing Street has provided precious little detail about what actually happened.

Calls for an investigation

Liberal Democrat MP James MacCleary has now written to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), asking it to consider investigating what he described as an “egregious security breach”.

Look, the issue here isn’t whether Burnham sent Britain’s nuclear codes to a bloke sitting in a basement somewhere. There is no suggestion anything remotely like that occurred.

The issue is that someone actually got through.

They convinced the Prime Minister they were Wiles. They got a response. Then another.

And in an era of deepfakes, AI voice cloning, increasingly sophisticated phishing operations and state-backed cyber interference, that should probably concern us more than whether Burnham feels embarrassed about it.

For the record, he doesn’t. He did everything right.

Just email him and ask.