FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 28. | AP Photo FBI investigating hack of GOP operative’s email It’s the latest signs that federal authorities are taking election-related cyber-crime seriously.

The FBI is investigating the email hacking of a Republican operative who believes she was targeted by allies of Donald Trump in a bizarre online “cat-fishing” scheme.

Communications strategist Cheri Jacobus said agents from the bureau have contacted her twice since last week about the hack, in which she says thousands of incoming emails disappeared from her account, after POLITICO first reported on the breach last month.


Jacobus said the agents planned to contact her service provider for more information on the hack and confer with a Justice Department investigator in the Southern District of New York who is familiar with circumstances surrounding the incident. The FBI has a policy of neither confirming nor denying the existence of investigations.

The inquiry is the latest sign that law enforcement officials are taking election-related cyber-crime seriously. In July, the FBI announced it was investigating a hack of the Democratic National Committee that security analysts believe to be part of a broader cyber-campaign against the American political system being conducted by the Russian government. In August, the FBI announced that voting systems in Illinois and Arizona had been targeted by hackers, an incident also linked to Russia. This month, hackers have leaked emails from the accounts of Colin Powell and White House Staffers.

There is no evidence that those hacks are related to the hacking of Jacobus’ email.

Instead, Jacobus’ breach appears to be related to an online “cat-fishing” scheme — one that deceives people using fake online identities — that targeted her and other Republican operatives beginning late last year. Jacobus was initially contacted last October, via Twitter, by a person posing as a representative of wealthy conservative donors. Over several months, and using multiple identities, the scheme sought information from Jacobus and others about plans to defeat Trump in the Republican primary.

This spring, Jacobus and a lawyer discovered the deception and linked it to Steven Wessel, a New York con man out on bail as he awaited a prison sentence for another fraud. As a result of his apparent role in the cat-fishing scheme, a judge revoked Wessel’s bail in April.

But Jacobus did not believe Wessel had the motive or the resources to be acting alone. And, in August, Jacobus said that thousands of emails — some of which she had been using in attempts to trace other participants in the scheme — had disappeared from her account in the hours after POLITICO began informing people about the impending publication of an article about the cat-fishing scheme.

While cat-fishing schemes can fall into a legal gray area, hacking an email account is a crime.

Last spring, Jacobus had preliminary conversations with Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, about a communications role with the campaign, but did not end up working for Trump. In a separate matter, Jacobus is suing Trump and Lewandowski for defamation in New York over comments they made about her on television earlier this year.