British Conservative member of parliament Luke Evans revealed that he’s among the U.K. politicians targeted in the sexting scandal first reported by POLITICO on Tuesday.
Evans is the second parliamentarian to go public about receiving alluring personal messages and explicit images, following senior Conservative MP William Wragg — who admitted on Thursday that he gave some phone numbers to a man he met on the dating app Grindr who had “compromising things on me.”
Evans appears to be the lawmaker who first alerted authorities to the phishing attacks.
“A month ago,” Evans said in a video posted on Facebook on Friday, “I was a victim of cyber flashing and malicious communications and blew the whistle by reporting it to the police and the parliamentary authorities as soon as this happened.”
The MP then told the story of the first suspicious message he received while he was with his wife: “I got a one-time open photo on WhatsApp of an explicit image of a naked lady.”
“The next day I reported it to the police, the authorities and the chief whip,” he explained.
The second set of malicious messages came 10 days later. This time the politician was with his team, “so we were able to record the conversation and catch photos and videos of the messages coming through including another explicit female image.”
Evans also explained why he didn’t go public until now. “I wanted it to be private because it’s an ongoing police investigation [that has] been ongoing for a month,” he said.
Earlier this week, Leicestershire Police and London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed they were investigating reports of malicious communications.
Since the scandal broke, “I’ve been hounded by journalists asking me about it. It’s not too difficult to work out, there are only a few Leicestershire MPs,” Evans added.
“I’m just pleased I blew the whistle, reported it to the authorities and it’s now being looked into,” he said.
POLITICO previously reported how a serving minister plus multiple MPs, party staffers and political journalists were among those who received unsolicited messages — sometimes called a “spear phishing attack”— from two suspicious mobile numbers sent by users calling themselves “Abi” or “Charlie.”
William Wragg, chairman of the Commons public administration committee, was the first to publicly confirm being a victim of the phishing scandal. He also admitted to having given phone numbers to the perpetrator after being threatened.
More than 10 men are known to have received messages, with at least five reporting them to the Parliamentary Security Department, but the true number targeted may never be known.
