Sep 28, 2009 11:33 pm US/Pacific
Wrong Man Swamped By Calif. Sex Scandal Anger
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―
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Michael Duvall, former California Republican Assemblyman from Orange County (File Photo)
California State Assembly
Mike Duvall has been besieged by furious, scathing e-mails ever since a sex scandal broke at the California Capitol this month.
Not
that Mike Duvall. The other one.
Utah businessman Mike Duvall hadn't heard about the explosive scandal that devastated California Assemblyman Mike Duvall's career earlier in September until hundreds of angry messages filled his inbox.
CBS stations in California aired videotape of Assemblyman Duvall describing sexual encounters with lobbyists on September 8, and less than a day later, the politician resigned.
Seven hundred miles away, a successful businessman and grandfather was bewildered when he was bombarded by messages from people who mistook him for the ex-politician.
"I opened up my e-mails and it just started scrolling and scrolling and scrolling," Duvall said in a phone interview with CBS13.
The misdirected e-mails could be diplomatically described as unkind; many used words like "scumbag," "embarrassment" and "disgrace" in regards to Duvall's character.
"I started to open them up one by one, and I was getting horrendously challenging, difficult e-mails from people in California I had never heard of in my life," the Utah man said. "There's people wanting my wife to leave me, wanting me to resign as a disgrace to America, they want me bankrupt."
Duvall's wife began asking questions about the flood of messages when they kept arriving.
"She said, 'Honey, what in the world have you been up to that I didn't even know about,'" Duvall said.
The case of mistaken identity came as a surprise to the man who runs his own identity theft protection business, but he's trying to cope with the dubious distinction of sharing a name with the political scoundrel of the moment.
"In today's day and age, you just never know what's going to happen," he said.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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