BuddyPress.org

I have my site set up so that people can register and create their username which can be their email address. When composing a private message to such a user I’ve noticed if I manually enter their email in the To field it says “Message could not be sent because you have entered an invalid username. Please try again.” If I go to the user’s profile and click send Private Message it autofills the To field and lets me send it that way.

Is this a known issue or am I missing something?

Thanks for your help!