CLEARLAKE – Two months after a state legislator became the victim of identify theft, another local leader is facing a similar issue regarding an e-mail account.

A hacker infiltrated the personal Hotmail account of Clearlake City Council member Joyce Overton and sent out e-mails asking for financial help.

The same thing happened to the personal e-mail account of state Sen. Patricia Wiggins, whose Hotmail account was hacked in August, as Lake County News reported.

On Wednesday night Lake County News received an e-mail from Overton with the words “Urgent – I need your help” in the subject line.

The message, notable for its poor grammar and run-on sentences, claimed to be from Overton, who the message said was traveling in Malaysia but became stranded after losing her money, passports and other documents. The scam that targeted Wiggins was similar except she was supposed to have been stranded in England.

The main point of the message was a request that the e-mail's recipient send $2,000 by Western Union to a specific address.

“That was not me,” Overton said Thursday.

Overton said she wanted to let constituents know about the issue so they wouldn't be taken advantage of by the scam.

She said she was working on contacting Microsoft about the issue. One of her concerns was that the hacker had locked her out of her account, and she was unable to access important personal information.

In Wiggins' case, the hackers were tracked to Africa.

Following her brush with identify theft, Wiggins promised to look into legislation to strengthen measures against such scams.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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