None other than the Prime Minister himself has been impersonated online by an industrious and seemingly Chinese conman, who has gone to great lengths to create a fake Instagram profile replete with official-looking photographs. The page even links to partitlaburista.org.

The individual has even gone as far as to recommend, in Joseph Muscat's name, contacting a certain Wang Wei for Bitcoin investments, in obvious Chinglish, promising an enormous return on investments within a month's time.

The recommendation from the 'Prime Minister' to contact Wang Wei for Bitcoin investments was posted on Wednesday, but it had been taken down from Instagram by yesterday.

The individual in question, however, is still on Instagram (wangwei8976), as is the fake Instagram profile being attributed to the Prime Minister (josephmuscat290). The Prime Minister's actual Instagram account is at josephmuscat_jm.

The fake profile with which the Prime Minister is still being impersonated online, or catfished, actually has 1,304 followers, most of whom are Maltese and include senior politicians, compared with the Prime Minister's actual 14,900 Instagram followers, which is run by the Labour Party.

Who, exactly, is running the parallel account remains a mystery.

Fake account:

https://www.instagram.com/josephmuscat290/

Wang Wei account:

https://www.instagram.com/wangwei8976/