Blogger Manuel Delia has warned people not to be fooled by fake emails or websites designed to impersonate him. 

"Someone somewhere is pretending to be me and sending emails that look like I’ve sent them and building spoof websites to look like they’re carrying things I wrote. Which I didn’t,” Delia wrote on his blog in a post titled ‘Beware counterfeit Manuel Delias'.

The fake emails seek to imply that Delia is mentally ill and on medication, and are being sent out by email addresses that spoof the @manueldelia.com domain used by his website.

Delia told Times of Malta that he had also come across screenshots of fake exchanges purporting to be between Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi and himself.

In his blog post, Delia wrote that he believed the attacks – “I have been receiving more anonymous messages on my phone than usual seeking to bully me and break my spirit,” he also noted – were part of a “bigger campaign”. 

An example of the fake emails being sent out.

Delia and Azzopardi were both cited by murder suspect Yorgen Fenech in court this week, in a judicial protest that asked the police to investigate them for “a concerted effort to influence” a judge. 

Leaked emails previously published on Delia's blog indicated that Fenech had discussed the possibility of suing Delia for an "absurd figure". 

The attempts to mislead readers about Delia were condemned by rule of law NGO Repubblika, which in a statement also said that the attacks were “a criminal act that is part of something broader and dirtier.” 

Delia forms part of Repubblika’s executive committee. 

Repubblika said that apart from the fake emails, “other types of digital threats” had also multiplied in recent days. It called on the authorities to investigate the attacks. 

PEN Malta also condemned the "systematic intimidatory tactics against journalists/bloggers"

"You have every right to criticise, but stop resorting to cowardly tactics. One journalist has already been killed," it said. 

Delia, meanwhile, urged readers not to be taken in by the tricksters.  

“Don’t be fooled by a familiar email address or by a familiar look and feel of the website. If it doesn’t read like the real thing, it almost certainly isn’t,” he wrote.