Steve Levine first realised something Very Strange Indeed was happening at 3.20pm on Thursday November 9. That was when he picked up the phone to be told by Stephen Budd, his manager: "You've got an impostor."

Levine, one of Britain's most successful record producers (he counts Culture Club, The Beach Boys and The Honeyz among his credits) didn't take it too seriously at first. "We actually had a laugh about it," he says. "It was only when I went back to work that the consequences began to sink in. That was when it got scary."

At that stage, he knew only a few facts: a man, passing himself off as Steve Levine, had negotiated a production deal with a would-be pop star in America. It had all gone sour and the pop star's lawyers had taken up the cudgels on their client's behalf. They had tracked down (the real) Levine's manager in England. Hence that fateful phone call.

That Thursday night was to be the first of several sleepless ones for Levine. After spending 14 hours on the phone to the States, a fuller picture had emerged. "The guy had been wreaking havoc in my name," says Levine. "It turned out he'd been introducing himself to several people in the business over there and trying to do deals with them. I'm almost certain he got money out of them. It seems he's left a trail of very important, very pissed off people behind him, who now think Steve Levine is a bullshitter and a fraud. He's in danger of destroying my career, my reputation: that's everything I've worked for over the past 25 years."

Levine isn't exaggerating: if you're a record producer, your reputation is your most valuable asset. Big money deals are often signed on the basis of a producer's name alone. Levine's current project, for example, a young male duo called Hush, only came his way after someone recommended him to the boys' parents. They were impressed by Levine's reputation: he was a man they could trust. It's this reputation that the fake Levine has been exploiting: the worry now is that he may have destroyed it.

Levine has the dubious distinction of being the first known victim of the newest form of cybercrime: identity snatching. It is a cunning and insidious variation on cyber squatting: unscrupulous net "entrepreneurs" buy the domain rights to famous people's names and then exploit them for financial gain. (Zoë Ball is a classic example: last year cyber squatters set up a website with mocked-up pornographic pictures of her on it.)

But identity snatching is more sinister and more sophisticated than mere cyber squatting: the fraudsters aren't just taking their victims' names and images, they're stealing their entire personalities and careers. And people like Levine are particularly susceptible. This is because while their names and achievements may be well known within certain circles, their faces are not. Which means it's much easier for the fraudsters to get away with it.

Levine is in no doubt that his impostor used the web as the basis of his deceit: "My entire CV and career details were on three different websites," he says. "All the bloke had to do was to type my name into a search engine, and he had it all there in front of him: everything he needed to know. There are things he's told people that he can only have learned from my details on the web."

(The horse may have bolted but none the less, Levine has shut the stable door: he's removed his personal details from his own website, www.stevelevine.co.uk, and replaced them with a contact address - info@record-producers.com - and his picture.)

What should worry well-known - but not famous - professionals everywhere, is the ease with which this scam was perpetrated; and the potentially catastrophic fallout it could entail.

"All I can do now is try and limit some of the damage he's caused, but it's going to be difficult," says a tired looking Levine. "The music business, like most creative industries, runs on gossip: if one person out there is bad-mouthing me, and saying 'Don't touch Levine with a bargepole', then word soon gets round. Rumours are very powerful things, unfortunately."

Levine, however, is fighting back, using the only weapons he has: words. "I'm hoping this article will start tilting the balance back in my favour," he says. "My impostor has been using cyberspace to get what he wants but I'm banking on good old- fashioned printed words to redress the balance."

Defiant he may be, then, but Levine is also a little frightened: it is psychologically unsettling, to say the least, to know that someone has stolen your persona. And he is also concerned about practical issues. His legal bills are mounting up. Frustratingly, he knows the money could well turn out to be wasted. "There's no guarantee that they'll catch this guy, and even if they do, it may be too late, in terms of the damage he's already done."

Only one thing, he says, could cure the frustrating powerlessness he now feels. He would love to come face to face with his cyber alter ego on a dark night. "Not very constructive I know: but it would make me feel a whole lot better."