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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: "claimoffice9@3xl.net" <awardclaim1@3xl.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 06:39:01 -1200
Subject: ONLINE LOTTO WINNINGS

Royal British Unlimited
P O Box 657
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)

WINNING NOTIFICATION OF ONLINE LOTTO WINNINGS:

We happily announce to you the draws of Royal British
Unlimited
Lottery, an International Web Sweepstakes Program held on
Friday 26th August, 2005.
Your email address attached to ticket/serial number
IE6098-05, with serial
number IE535-29 drew the lucky numbers: 1-15-24-37-42-50
(bonus no. 33), With
Ref.Number: IES/376O05/77, Batch Number: 05/507/IES360 and
subsequently won
the lottery in the 1st category.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£880,000.00
(Eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling) in cash
credited to file
ISPR/7563409218/05. This is from a total cash prize of
£8,680,770.00
shared amongst the first nine (9) lucky Winners in this
category.

All participants for the online version were selected
randomly from
World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and
extracted from over 154,000
Unions, Associations and Corporate Bodies listed online.

In view of this, your £880,000.00 (Eight hundred and
eighty thousand
pounds sterling) would be released to you by any of our
payment offices.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning
information
confidential till your claims is processed and your money
remitted to
you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.
This is part of our
precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and
unwarranted abuse of
this program. Deductions from WINNING SUM are not allowed
until WINNING SUM
has been handed over to the winner. Please be warned. To
file for your
claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:

Royal British Unlimited
P O Box 657
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)
Email: awardclaim@3xl.net

All prize money must be claimed in ten working days. After
this date,
all funds will be returned as unclaimed.

NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and
complications, please
always remember to quote your reference and batch numbers in
every
correspondence with your claims agent. Furthermore, should
there be any change of your
address, do inform your claims agent as soon as possible.

Please include your private telephone and fax numbers while
replying.

Congratulations once again from our team of staff and thank
you for
being part
of our promotional program.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Helen Woods
Lottery Coordinator
----------------------------------------------------------

Note: Anybody under the age of 17 is AUTOMATICALY
DISQUALIFIED and Any
BREACH of CONFIDENTIALITY on the part of the WINNERS will
result to
disqualification.

Anti-fraud resources: