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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: Usman and Aasera Al-Darra <outgoingmassages@ozu.es>
Reply-To: mikkyroyal@yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:51:18 -0600
Subject: We are From Syria, we need your assistant


I am sorry to use this medium to contact you as we have never meet before, our names are Usman and Aasera Al-Darra, I am 16 years and my Sister is 13 years, we are from Syria.

I and my Sister was studying in London before the political crisis in my country Syria which unfortunately it claimed the life of our beloved ones and living us in this frustrating / painful condition.

Our parents died in Syria with two of our brothers, please listen to this and try to keep it to yourself only, before the death of our parents my Father deposited some money in a bank in Accra-Ghana without any next of kin, the amount is US$ 38.8M (Thirty Eight Million eight hundred thousand United States dollars) with 15 kilos of gold bar. I have the documents for all the deposit.

After the death of our parents I and my Sister traveled to Ghana with all the documents concerning the funds with the death certificate of my father, when we get to the bank we meet with the bank manager and tender all the documents to him, the bank manager examined all the documents and confirms that our claims are true.

He told us that we cannot make direct claim because our names are not in the paper as the next of kin and we are still under age, the bank manager advised us to go and look for a foreign beneficiary who can stand for me as my late father business partner so that the fund can be release, so I told the bank manager that I will contact my father business partner to come and assist us.

I am contacting and pleading with you to come and stand as my late father’s business partner so that the bank can release the funds to us.

I want you to tell me how many % that you will like to take from the total amount.

We are waiting for your swift reply.

Regards,

Usman and Aasera Al-Darra

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