A candidate for the Monmouth seat in next week’s seismic General Election has fallen victim to identity theft after someone allegedly cloned her Facebook account.

Alison Willott, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Monmouth, has contacted police after an unknown person set up a fake Facebook Messenger account in her name and likeness.

The hacker then contacted another Lib Dem member through the fraudulent account, saying that Alison had received £100,000 from a fake government scheme.

“It was peculiar,” said Alison.  

“A colleague emailed me on last Tuesday morning, and said, “Am I talking to you on Messenger?”  I said, ‘No’; and I asked what were the messages saying?  

“While I was exchanging emails with him, he was still getting messages coming through on this fake account.” 

The Messenger account even copied Alison’s Facebook profile photo, before sending a number of messages, which only stopped when the recipient stopped replying.

The last message said:

“I’m so happy I got £100,000 cash from them and I saw your name on the list when they came to delivered (sic) mine.  So I thought I would see if you’ve gotten it yet?”

Describing as herself as “furious,” the Liberal Democrat candidate said she was concerned that her name could be tarnished ahead of next week’s crucial General Election.

“Someone has set up a Messenger account in my name: falsely.  They have sent out messages purporting to be from me which is false.  These messages assert that I have received £100,000 from a very dubious source which is also false.”

 Alison referred the matter to the police the same day and is ‘pleased’ that they have said they are taking it seriously.  

“The only reason for doing this, that I can think of is to keep the messages till just before election day, and then publicise them to discredit me just before everybody goes to vote, when I haven’t got time to disprove them,” said Ms Willott.

Seeking to discredit a candidate for election through false allegations (which attempt to affect the election result) is a serious offence under the Section 106 of the Representation of the People Act.

 “I am astonished that someone is able just to set up a fake Messenger account in my name with my photo on it,” she said.  

“We need to review carefully all the ways in which people can now try to tamper with our elections.

“The law dates from when campaigning just consisted of putting leaflets through letter-boxes.  It hasn’t really caught up with the internet age.”

Alison could not explain why someone would fake her account, but suggested that the reasons could be either political, or entirely unrelated to politics or her standing as a candidate.

“I do not understand why this is being done,” she said.

“It looks like a typical overseas scam, except that no-one is offering money or asking for money. 

“Instead there is a statement that I have received money, and my colleague is about to. 

“So what is anyone gaining by doing this? It is peculiar. But, I also think - or hope - it is a one-off. I cannot understand what they planned to achieve.”

Alison added that police are now trying to trace the hoaxer’s IP address and unmask whoever was responsible—a hope Alison herself finds remote.

The candidate for Monmouth has recently received messages from Labour supporters demanding she stand down, in the belief that Labour are ‘best placed’ to beat David Davies, the Conservative candidate.

The constituency of Monmouth has been represented by David TC Davies since 2005.

Labour has won the seat three times in 1966, 1991 and 1997. In the 2017 snap election Mr Davies’ majority was 8,206.