British Foreign Secretary David Cameron exchanged messages and even held a video call with a man claiming to be former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, but the conversations were later classified as hoaxes, his office said on Friday.
“Although in the video it indeed appears to be Mr. Poroshenko, after the conversation, the Secretary for International Relations became suspicious,” the office said in a statement.
“Now the department has investigated and confirmed that it was not genuine, and the messages and video calls were fraudulent.”
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The statement did not say what was discussed, except that the author asked Cameron for other contact details.
The secretariat said Cameron was making the hoax public “to reduce the risk in case the video featuring the Foreign Secretary was manipulated and subsequently used, and to ensure others are aware of this risk”.
“Although he regrets his mistake, the International Relations Secretary believes it is important to condemn this behavior and increase efforts to combat the use of misinformation,” he said.
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The United Kingdom, which will hold a national election on July 4, has not said who was responsible for the fraud.
Cameron is not the country’s first foreign minister to fall for a hoax. In 2018, Boris Johnson discussed international relations and poetry with a fraudster pretending to be the Armenian prime minister. In 2022, the United Kingdom blamed Russia for calling two ministers and attempting to call a third.
