An email prankster who claims to have ensnared major public figures from around the world reportedly managed to trick a number of people connected to the White House in July.
Donald Trump Jr., ex-White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and U.S. Ambassador to Russia-designate Jon Huntsman Jr. are just a few people that a prankster known on Twitter as @Sinon_Reborn claimed to have fooled in a series of emails, according to CNN.
He reportedly sent messages pretending to be a number of people, including Eric Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law; and Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff.
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Scaramucci attacks White House colleagues in profanity-laced rant
The prankster, who is based in the U.K., uses email to pretend he’s someone else in order to provoke responses from well-known officials.
He sent a number of messages to Scaramucci’s official email account from a Mail.com address, pretending to be Priebus.
One of the messages read as follows:
But Scaramucci did respond, according to CNN’s Jake Tapper.
The ex-communications director reportedly told “Reince,” “You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured we were prepared. A man would apologize.”
The prankster reportedly wrote back, still pretending to be Priebus: “I can’t believe you are questioning my ethics! The so called ‘Mooch,’ who can’t even mange his first week in the White House without leaving upset in his wake. I have nothing to apologize for.”
But the prankster didn’t just target Scaramucci as Priebus. He also sent the ex-White House communications director a message masquerading as Huntsman.
He claimed to have previously fooled Huntsman into thinking he was Eric Trump.
Huntsman reportedly responded to “Eric” with this message:
Eric Trump himself also reportedly wasn’t immune from the prankster’s games.
The prankster tweeted a message that reportedly came from Eric, who apparently thought he was emailing his brother, Donald Trump Jr.
The prankster also reportedly fooled a man named Arthur Schwartz, who has been quoted as a representative for Scaramucci, according to The New York Daily News.
Schwartz had accused Priebus of having a mistress on Twitter, though he later deleted the tweet and apologized.
The email prankster posted screengrabs of emails that he allegedly exchanged with Schwartz, pretending to be Priebus.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN that it was looking into the matter, and added that “all cyber-related issues” are taken “very seriously.”
But these officials are far from the first to be caught up in the prankster’s games.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein exchanged emails with the prankster earlier this year, according to Fortune.
Mark Carney, the former head of the Bank of Canada and now governor of the Bank of England, was also fooled, according to The Telegraph.
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