U.S. SENATE Impostor fouls up candidate's e-mails
A link to the candidate's Web site had left out part of his address.
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Thomas Pitzke thought he was asking his favored candidate for U.S. Senate a reasonable question about security and Israel when he e-mailed Mike Miller a couple of months back through the candidate's Web site.
The answer he received stunned him.
The e-mail said, "Oh, go f--- yourself." It went on to say the author answers smart people first and the people who give him money "firstest."
Republican Mike Miller hasn't suddenly developed a penchant for obscenity-laced e-mails. There's an impostor in Chicago with the same name who is sending offensive replies to people who stumble upon his e-mail address while trying to reach Miller.
"He must have a little short fuse or something, because his e-mails are not nice," said Michael Pauley, candidate Miller's spokesman.
The problem started around April, when Mike Miller's campaign needed a Web site. The address the campaign wanted, www.mikemiller.com, was already taken, so the campaign settled for www.mikemiller2004.com, Pauley said.
But while setting up the Web site, someone forgot to type "2004" in a link, Pauley said. The campaign started getting reports of nasty e-mails to people who had contributed money or sent a message.
The other guy
Those were coming from the other Mike Miller, the one at mikemiller.com, who has two e-mail addresses similar to ones used for the campaign, Pauley said.
The link was fixed a couple weeks later, and Pauley said he hadn't heard from anyone since April. Until this week.
The Mike Miller posing as the candidate said when contacted through e-mail that he had received no more than a "couple hundred" messages relating to the Mike Miller candidacy. He declined to be interviewed.
"I'm not sure I've done all I can to help out yet," he wrote. "It's an important election, you know."
His Web site indicates he is 35, lives in Chicago and produces Web sites and Web-based applications.
There's nothing illegal about impersonating someone through e-mail, Eric Gonzalez of the FBI said. If someone were trying to solicit money, it would be fraud. But calling people names? It sounds like a prank, the FBI agent said.
"The best thing to do is hit delete," Gonzalez said.