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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: mariam abacha <mab_221@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:52:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: FROM THE DESK OF MRS MARIAM ABACHA


Dear friend,

PLEADING FOR YOUR HELP AND BUSINESS INVESTMENT ADVICE.
It gives me great pleasure to contact you, and I do hope this letter
will not come to you as a surprise. I am Mrs Mariam . s.Abacha, (the
former Nigeria Military president /Head of state) who died
mysteriously as a result of heart attack in the year 1998. I decided
to contact you so that we can arrange with you for favorable term of
trade and possibility of moving some family funds, to your possession.
Since the death of my husband, our family and closed
friends have not been allowed to move freely by the
present civilian government in Nigeria, because of the enemity that
existed between the late Gen. Abacha and the present civilian
president/Head of state of Nigeria.
Consequently our joint bank accounts here in Nigeria and
abroad has been frozen in a very wicked manner, since the government
discovered the accounts.You may wish to know that right now our
US645Million lodged with Swiss bank in Zurich and Geneva has been
frozen since October 1999. Another huge amount of money with a bank in
Luxembourg was blocked within April/may 2000. We also lost another
US100Million lodged with a bank in the small country of Liechtenstein.
Our account with a
Brazilian bank was frozen in 1999, another of our joint
accounts in a Germany base bank account were all frozen
in 1999.This has made our family to have lost over
US$2Billion to the government.
All these loses was mainly due to the fact that we
mistakenly operated these account with Abacha's family
names and with our personal business names which made it possible for
them to locate our funds easily in those bank. For partnership
purpose, we decided to contact you in confidence to inform you that we
have in our possession the certificate of the deposit made by my late
husband, which were funds that were secretly moved out of the country.
These funds involve a total cash sum of US$32M(thirty two million
united-state dollars only). which were hidden, and packaged in a metal
box and the box are presently being kept with a security deposit house
in Accra, Ghana as family valuables and the certificate of deposit of
the valuables is in our possession.
We are appealing for urgent assistance to move the fund
to your country/private or company bank account or any
country where you believe the fund will be safe. As soon as the fund
claimed,we will like to know how to arrange where Dr. Michael Ezeh
will meet with you for the conclusion of the transaction.
Upon receipt of your response we will tell you how to
recieve the fund and we shall arrange for a face-to-face
meeting outside Nigeria with my confidential
secretary/family business consultant (DR.Michael Ezeh)
for a successful completion of the transaction. We have
agreed to offer you 25% of the ($32,000,000 USD} thirty TWO MILLION UNITED STATE DOLLAR
while you will hold 75% on TRUST for us as we would like to do good
business investment in your Country and
also invest in your company's lines of product/business.
Please you are required to treat this letter as very
confidential as no other person knows about this money
except me, my son (Mohammed) your very self and
DR.Michael Ezeh. I look forward to your earliest reply
through my email.
May God bless you as you help us at this difficult time.

Yours Sincerely,
Mrs.Mariam.S.Abacha



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