It has emerged that Peter Mandelson, while serving as Britain's ambassador to the US, was targeted in 2025 by a hoaxer posing as Susie Wiles, Donald Trump's chief of staff, a year before a similar impersonator tricked Prime Minister Andy Burnham. The revelation raises fresh concerns about the vulnerability of senior UK and US officials to impersonation scams, particularly given that the same or a similar hoax appears to have circulated among top British diplomatic figures for over a year without being fully traced.

According to a source cited by The Telegraph, the hoaxer texted Lord Mandelson asking to arrange a meeting, but when the British embassy in Washington sought to confirm a date with Wiles' office, it was told her phone had been hacked. Burnham's more recent exchange with an impersonator began before he became Prime Minister and continued after he took office on 20 July 2026; he has downplayed the incident as "minimal" and "of zero consequence" but confirmed it was reported to authorities. It has been claimed the fake number was passed to Burnham by former foreign secretary David Lammy, who held that post at the same time as Mandelson. Wiles has separately had her phone hacked by an AI-voice impersonator in May last year and had her emails infiltrated by a group linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 2024, though the White House says the Burnham incident is unrelated, with Trump dismissing it as a "miscommunication".