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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: "Okoye" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <justusok1@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 04:03:36 +0800
Subject: key to the retrieval of your outstanding claims

Sir, You might doubt this, but I have a key to the retrieval of your outstanding claims which have not bee released to you for a long time now. This is not a joke, I am serious and do not doubt this message. Kindly get back to me for an update on how to retrieve your entire outstanding contract inheritance funds by bypassing all official bureaucratic holdups using an Open Financial Exchange Platform (OFX). This is a Personal Financial Management scheme powered by Tuborswift and swift software provided by Bankserv (www.bankserv.com) which is an American IT company who are worldwide experts in electronic payments. I want to assure you that this is the ONLY sure way of retrieving your long outstanding funds since all other methods have failed. This shall be completed within 7 days without leaving traces nor subject you to any form of risks or scrutiny since the entire transfers would be completely encrypted. Upon your response, I shall give you a 100% detailed explanation of this process for your review and consideration. I will be giving you in details all the steps involved so can decide if you would wish to continue with me or not. There is no hard feelings if you should turn down my offer upon reading hrough the detailed steps. But I would want you to know the end even from the very beginning. Please get back to me so I can furnish you with details before you decide on whether you would want to get paid through this medium or not. I await your response. Don’t doubt this because it is real and works like magic under this arrangement, you no longer need to pay attention to endless documentations, transfer fees and other official bureaucratic bottlenecks. Just try this and ask for the details on how it works. You will be amazed. Best Regards, JUSTUS OKOYE

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