LONDON--British police said on Sunday they had arrested a man after a hoaxer posing as a government official e-mailed relatives of people missing since the Asian tsunami, saying their loved ones had been confirmed dead.
The hoaxer, claiming to be from the "Foreign Office Bureau" in Thailand, targeted people who had placed appeals for information about relatives and friends on the Web site of TV station Sky News.
Police said they had arrested a 40-year-old man and seized computer equipment. The man was being questioned at a London police station, a police statement said.
All the messages came from one bogus e-mail address, ukgovfoffice+aol.com.
"The British government would not use e-mail to convey news of the death of a loved one," police said. "Anyone receiving such an e-mail should treat it with utmost caution."
Sky News said it was "disgusted" at the abuse of the message board on its Web site and had contacted police as soon as it was alerted to the hoaxes.
The death toll from the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off western Indonesia a week ago, stood at almost 130,000 on Sunday.
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