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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

The so-called "419" scam is a type of fraud dominated by criminals from Nigeria and other countries in Africa. Victims of the scam are promised a large amount of money, such as a lottery prize, inheritance, money sitting in some bank account, etc.

Victims never receive this non-existent fortune but are tricked into sending their money to the criminals, who remain anonymous. They hide their real identity and location by using fake names and fake postal addresses as well as communicating via anonymous free email accounts and mobile phones.

Keep in mind that scammers DO NOT use their real names when defrauding people.
The criminals either abuse names of real people or companies or invent names or addresses.
Any real people or companies mentioned below have NO CONNECTION to the scammers!

Read more about such scams here or in our 419 FAQ. Use the Scam-O-Matic to verify suspect emails.

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Fraud email example:

From: "Mrs.Mary Jacob." <mary-jacob@excite.com> (may be fake)
Reply-To: mrsmaryjacob1@yahoo.com
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 20:44:57 +0400
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

I am MRS MARY JACOB from LIBERIA, the wife of Brigadier PETER JACOB.
My purpose of contacting you is to help me out of my difficult condition in view of my husband's death.I need your assistance to help me to transfer some money out of south Africa into your personal or company's account.The amount involved is {US$5.000,000} FIVE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

My late husband was in charge of arms purchasing for LIBERIA arms forces and he generated this money in the course of purchasing arms for LIBERIA armed forces.

He deposited this money with a private security company here in south Africa in cash and i assure you that nobody knows about this money except my two sons and me.
All i am asking you is to assist us to trasfer this money out of south Africa for investment purposes.

The reason being that I and my two sons are living in south Africa as political asylum seekers and the financial laws of south Africa do not allow asylum seekers certain financial rights,hence I shall be very grateful if you can assist us.For your efforts,

I am prepared to offer you 35% of the total money while 5% will be set aside for local and international expenses incurred during the course of this transaction.

As soon as you get this message, Please reply this immidiatly Please the assurance i will always give you is that this transaction is 100% risk free, as i do not want anything to happen to this money.

Finally,if you are not interested,I will like you to always keep the confidentiality of this transaction.

Best regards,

MRS MARY JACOB


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