Westminster honeytrapper stole my photos, man tells police
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Scotland Yard has been contacted by a man whose photos were allegedly stolen by the Westminster honeytrapper targeting MPs.
The man went to police after four images from his Facebook account were used as profile pictures by someone calling themselves “Charlie”, Politico has reported.
Around 20 Westminster figures, including three MPs, have been targeted by online profiles with the aliases “Charlie” or “Abi”, which have sent flirtatious messages and in some cases explicit photos.
The photographs, seen by The Telegraph, were taken from a man’s social media profiles and appear to date from his school days and early years of university.
The man, who The Telegraph has chosen not to name, deleted his social media profiles shortly after he was contacted about the photographs on Tuesday. The images were later censored and published online by The Times.
Leicestershire Police and the Metropolitan Police have launched investigations into the scandal, and Downing Street has urged affected MPs to contact the police.
On Tuesday, a Scotland Yard spokesperson said: “Officers from the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command are carrying out an investigation following reports that a number of unsolicited messages were sent to MPs over recent months.
“We are working closely with other forces and are in contact with colleagues in parliamentary security, who are providing support and advice around anyone affected.”
Recommended
Westminster honeytrap messages revealed
A Labour MP and party staffers have also told the Times they were messaged on Grindr by a profile using the same photographs as “Charlie” and going by the user name M-xl.
The fake profile was said to have used a photograph of a young man wearing a Levi’s T-shirt and asked alleged targets whether they had slept with journalists and MPs before bragging about having had sex with prominent political figures. There is no suggestion any of the claims made by the profile are true.
William Wragg, the Tory MP for Hazel Grove, quit the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers on Monday after admitting he responded to messages on Grindr, the gay dating app, before sending on the phone numbers of parliamentary colleagues, who were subsequently targeted.
However, a former spy chief claimed on Tuesday the scandal would not do “serious” damage to national security.
Ciaran Martin, a previous chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, downplayed the scale of the threat and said he did not think a foreign state was behind the attacks.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I doubt the security services are panicking about this… This is a backbench MP, albeit a senior one, a chair of a select committee, but not somebody with access to very sensitive information.
“And so far as we know … he did disclose the numbers of other MPs, and some of them are understandably furious about that. But that in and of itself will not be a cause of serious national security harm.”
Mr Martin went on to argue that “capable nation states” had already obtained “the numbers of any and every MP, or could acquire them quite easily”.
Asked whether the honeytrap was the work of a foreign state, he said: “Well it might be, but one of the things the Government has developed, I think rightly over the years, is what they call in the jargon an ‘attribution framework’.
“And [that means] you have to have a high degree of technical confidence – you don’t just throw allegations around against other states without some serious technical proof.
“And in terms of foreign state cyber attacks – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea being the four most common over the last 25 years – we have developed a detailed knowledge of their tradecraft, what their code looks like and so forth, and that doesn’t apply here.”
The suspected honeytrapper is also believed to have targeted the Liberal Democrats’ annual gathering, which was held in Bournemouth a fortnight before the Labour conference.
A spokesman for the Liberal Democrats said it was “deeply disturbing” individuals were being targeted and urged anybody affected to contact the police. Labour was contacted for comment.
