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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: "Confidence Williams" <cwilliams@sunsetglobe.com>
Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 16:54:24 +0000
Subject: IMPORTANT NOTICE.

Dear friend,

Am Mrs.Confidence Williams, in charge of Bills and Foreign Exchange
Remittance Department of LEAD MERCHANT BANK PLC. I am writing you this
letter to ask for your support and co-operation to carry out this business
opportunity in my department.

We discovered an unclaimed sum of $35Million (Thirty five Million Dollars)
in an account belonging to one of our a foreign customer(Neuweiler Adrienne)
who was an petroleum/gas consultant/contactor with the Nigeria National
Petroleum coporation who happens to be deceased during a business trip. He
died with his wife (Christine Adrienne) on board the Swissair Flight 111
,which crashed into the Atlantic off Nova Scotia in september 2nd 1998.


The plane crash was in the news.See links below for more detail
informaion:
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/WORLD/9809/swissair.victims.list/
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9809/08/swissair.02/
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9809/05/swissair.transcript
s/

Since we got information about his death we have been expecting his next of
kin to come over and claim his money. Unfortunately, neither the family nor
the relation has appeared to claim this money.We cannot release this money
unless somebody applies as the next of kin or relation to the deceased. Our
banking guidelines indicated that if such money remained unclaimed for a
period of eight (7) years, it would be transferred into the MERCHANT BANK
Treasury as unclaimed fund. Another officer and I in the department now
decided to transfer this money into your account as the next of kin or
relation of the deceased for easy collection since nobody is coming for it
and we dont want this money to go back into the bank treasury as the
unclaimed debt.

Infact it is my friend that advised me to urgently arrange to transfer out
this money through another foreign beneficiary outside the country. We have
decided to give you 15% of the total sum. So please, as a matter of urgency
send to me,

1.Your Contact address:
2.Contact Telephone & fax Numbers:
3.Age and occupation:

for effective communication. I will do my best to see that we conclude this
transaction successfully on time.Please if you are interested send me an
immediate mail so that I can explain the details to you to understand
everything about this business.

Waiting for your urgent response.

Best Regards.

Mrs.C.Williams.


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