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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: "vantrevo" <natwest@natwest.net> (may be fake)
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 20:18:03 +0200
Subject: important !

Att:

I am a staff of Natwest Bank London. I am writing following an oppurtunity in my office that will be of imense benefit to both of us. In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of $19.5million Dollars (Ninteen million five hundred thousan Dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers Late Mr. Morris Thompson an American who unfortunately lost his life in the plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 which crashed on January 31 2000, including his wife and only daughter.
You shall read more about the crash on visiting this site.
<http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/> and <http://www.nativefederation.org/history/people/mThompson.html>
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin or relatives to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines.

Unfortunately I learnt that his supposed next of kin being his only daughter died along with him in the plane crash leaving nobody with the knowledge of this fund behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery that I and two other officials in this department now decided to make business with you and release the money to you as the next of kin or beneficiary of the funds for safety keeping and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go back into Government treasury as unclaimed bill. The banking law and guidelines here stipulates that such money remained after five years the money will be transferred into banking treasury as unclaimed funds.
We agreed that 15% of this money will be for you as foreign partner, while the balance will be for me and my colleagues. I will visit your country for the disbursement according to the percentages indicated above once this money gets into your account. Please
be honest to me and my colleagues trust is our watchword in this transaction. Note this transaction is confidential and risk free.
As soon as you receive this mail.please do your very best to get in touch with our (FOREIGN PAYMENT DIRECTOR)
email at: drdasilva007@netscape.net <http://mail.yahoo.com/config/login?/ym/Compose?To=drdasilva007@netscape.net>
Please note that all necessary arrangement for the smooth release of these funds has been finalised. Our Foreign Payment Director,Dr Dasilva Pedro will give you specific instruction on what to do. Please in your response include your telephone number for easy communication between us.

Best Regards!
MR VAN TREVO




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