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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: "KC MARK" <kcmark2009@gawab.com> (may be fake)
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 23:35:44 +0000
Subject: DEAR FRIEND

ATTEN:
I AM MR. KC MARK.THE OPERATIONS OFFICER, BILL AND EXCHANGE OF THE FOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT OF ONE OF THE REPUTABLE BANKS IN NIGERIA.
I am writing to you, following the impressive information about your profile through the Website,and I believe in your capability and reliability to champion this opportunity.In my department, we
discovered an abandoned sum of 14million US dollars (Fourteen million US dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in october6,2000,in a plane crash.
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of Kin to come over and claim his money because we can not release it unless some body applies for it as next of Kin or relative to the deceased as indicated in our banking and financial policies unfortunately we learnt that his supposed next of kin or relation died with him in the accident leaving nobody behind to claim the money.It is therefore upon this discovery that I and other officials in my
department now decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don’t want this money to go into the Bank treasury as unclaimed bills.The Banking law and guide line here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after four years, the money will be transferred into the Bank treasury as unclaimed fund.The request for a foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and an indigene cannot stand as next of kin to the deceased family.
We agreed that 20% of this money will be for you as foreign partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, 5% will be set aside for expenses incurred during this transaction and 75 % would be for me and my colleagues.Thereafter,I and my colleagues will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages indicated.Therefore, to enhance the immediate transfer of thisfund to you as arranged,you must apply first to the Bank as relation or next of kin of the deceased indicating your private,telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location where the money will be remitted.
Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by faxor e-mail the text of the application.I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer.You should contact me on my E-MAIL, as soon as you receive this letter. I decided to contact you as you have products of interest in your
part of the world where we can invest our own percentage to avoid peoples awarenessas we are civil servants.
Note that we can conclude this operation within ten banking days.Please keep this very confidential for obvious security reasons. Contact me for more information, all confirmable before you apply if you want. Trusting to hear from you shortly for a detailed information which are confirmable before you can makeup your mind to apply.If however,you are interested,do let me know by sending me an email too, as I will not contact anybody else until I hear from you.May God be with you.
Yours faithfully
KC MARK


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