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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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Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "Allen Large" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <745allenlarge@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:34:12 +0100
Subject: Hello

Dear Friend,

This is a personal email directed to you. Let me formally introduce myself to you, my name is Mr. Allen Large. I and my dear wife Violet won a Jackpot Lottery of $11.3 million in July 2010 and have voluntarily decided to donate the sum of $950,000.00 USD to you as part of our own charity project to improve the lot of 5 lucky individuals all over the continents of the world. If you have received this email today then you are one of the lucky recipients and all you have to do is get back to us so that we can send your details to the payout bank. Please provide us your full name, Date of birth, telephone, address, country. You can verify this by visiting the web pages below.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101104/od_yblog_upshot/nicest-canadian-couple-in-world-doles-out-lottery-winnings
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2010/11/04/ns-allen-violet-large-lottery-winning.html

Goodluck,
Allen and Violet Large



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