Achi news desk-
Two weeks ago, Michelle Mone sent me a DM on TikTok.
He asked if I was the Andrew who worked at the BBC.
No, I replied.
I mentioned Andrew who works for the corporation. She said yes, that was the one. She said she pushed it to some time in 2022 and now feels “very bad”.
She wanted to get in touch, “just to say sorry from the bottom of my heart”.
At that point, I should have clocked that something wasn’t right.
When I mentioned it to my namesake at the BBC, he told me he had no idea what I was talking about. He asked some of the other Andrews who work for the broadcaster. There are quite a few.
None of them had been pushed by the Tory lord in 2022.
I then emailed Baroness Mone’s office and asked if this was her TikTok account. It was not.
So I have some sympathy with William Wragg.
I mean I didn’t send a photo of my will to the pretend peer, no, but I got caught in a really stupid, obvious fake. It can happen to all of us.
My sympathy for Wragg is limited though.
I don’t agree with Jeremy Hunt that the Tory MP’s admission means he is “brave.”
Nor with treasury minister Gareth Davies who claimed that many people understood why Wragg “behaved in a way that he thought was appropriate.”
Wragg met the man on the dating app Grindr. He then sent personal photos of himself and was then blackmailed into sending over colleagues’ contact details.
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Flirty messages were then sent to those colleagues – who are understood to include MPs, aides and journalists – by people identifying themselves as either “Charlie” or “Abi”.
The sender would explain that they had met before, usually in one of the parliamentary bars or at the party conference.
Soon, a clear picture was sent to those targeted and they were asked to respond in kind.
He didn’t do much. Some were blocking Charlie or Abi. Some reported it to the police. The Times reports that at least two MPs have returned.
What is absolutely damning for Wragg is that, according to Politico, one person targeted by the operation said the scammer had told them he previously worked for the MP.
Although that was a lie, Wragg said that was the case.
It only came back last week, when details of the scandal first began to emerge in the press.
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Downing Street’s reluctance to take action against the MP is difficult to understand. Don’t they want another by-election? We are having our 23rd of this parliament next month.
Wragg shared the private details of MPs and people who work in parliament to an unknown entity. It could have put them in danger.
He is a victim, no doubt about that. But the way he has behaved and reacted to being blackmailed goes beyond naive. He is reckless.
Over the weekend, Dame Andrea Jenkyns accused her Tory colleague of “inexcusable” behaviour.
She was one of the backbenchers who received a suspicious WhatsApp after Wragg handed over her contact details.
“Unlike some MPs I am not happy with Wragg, as a mother with a young child who only recently received threats. It is inexcusable that he jeopardized the safety of his fellow Members of Parliament. Action is needed,” he wrote on Twitter.
“How dare he?” he added later. “The brave thing to do would be to ignore the blackmail. I really hope to God they can track down who is behind the messages – it’s sickening.”
According to reports, 17 Westminster figures have now been taken in by the fraud.
Senior political figures including Alicia Kearns, chair of the foreign affairs committee, have suggested that a foreign state could be responsible.
Although one Scottish MP I spoke to suggested this was a more “local” thing, with many of the victims coming from a group of friends, possibly even some disgruntled ex-staff wreaking havoc.
Or could it be some sort of troll farm?
It wasn’t too difficult to track the number used. According to the Who Called Me website, the first time the number was searched was three years ago. The first report of a catfish scam was 11 months ago. It has been searched 185 times since then.
But it doesn’t seem like some MPs were only too eager and happy to send scuddy pictures.
The Met is now investigating, but the chances of finding a culprit are slim.
What is the moral of the story? He may not give your phone number to William Wragg. Or maybe it’s doing your due diligence before sending personal images over WhatsApp. Or maybe it’s that if you want to blackmail someone, bored MPs with nothing better to do on those late nights in Westminster are an easy target.
