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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.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

Fraud email example:

From: =?iso-8859-1?q?koffi=20harris?= <harriskoffi_05@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 11:06:57 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: May God be with you




Mr. HARRIS KOFFI

INTERNATIONAL BANK OF AFRICA LOME-TOGO

DEAR SIR, I AM AN ACCOUNTANT IN THE BILL AND EXCHANGE OF THEFOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL BANK OFAFRICA I am writing you, following your contact I got fromthe website.Therefore, I believed that you shall posess thecapability and reliability to champion thisopportunity with me. In my department, we discovered an abandoned sum of 14million US dollars (Fourteen million US dollars), inan account that belongs to one of our foreigncustomers who died along with his wife in october,1999in a plane crash. Since we got the ugly information about his death, wehave been expecting his next of Kin to come over andclaim his money because we can not release it unlesssomebody applies for it as next of Kin or relation tothe deceased as indicated in our banking and financialpolicies but unfortunately we learnt that his supposednext of kin (the wife) died along side with him inthe accident leaving no body behind to claim themoney.It is therefore upon this discovery
that I and apartner in my department now decided to make thisbusiness proposal to you and release the money to youas the next of kin or relation to the deceased forsafety and subsequent disbursement since nobody iscoming for it and we don,t want this money to go intothe Bank treasury as unclaimed bills. The Banking law and guideline here stipulates that ifsuch money remained unclaimed after five years, themoney will be transferred into the Bank treasury asunclaimed fund.The request for a foreigner as next of kin in thisbusiness is occasioned by the fact that the customerwas a foreigner and an indigene cannot stand as nextof kin to the deceased family. We agreed that 20% of this money will be for you asforeign partner, in respect to the provision of aforeign account, 5% will be set aside for expensesincurred during this transaction and 75 % would be forme and my colleagues. Thereafter, I and my colleagueswill visit your country for disbursement according tothe percentages
indicated.To enable the immediate transfer of this fund to youas arranged above, you must apply first to the Bank asthe relation or next of kin to the deceased indicatingyour private telephone and fax numbers for easy andeffective communication and location where the moneywill be remitted. Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by faxor e-mail the text of the application. I will not failto bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch and that you should not entertain any atom offear as all required arrangements have been made forthe transfer. You should contact me on my E-MAIL as soon as youreceive this letter. I decided to contact you as wehave products of interest in your part of the worldwhere we can invest our own percentage to avoidpeoples awareness as we are civil servants. With youracceptance and cooperation, we can conclude thisoperation within 14 working days. Please keep this very confidential. May God be with you. Yours faithfully,Mr. Harris Koffi




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