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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.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "Charles Greene" <charlesgreene123@msn.com>
Reply-To: cgreene45@tiscali.it
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 14:09:35 +0000
Subject: From Mr Charles Greene

>From the desk of:
Mr.Charles Greene
Auditor General of
Natwest Bank Group
UK.

Dear Sir,


I am Mr.Charles Greene Auditor General of Natwest Bank Group UK. 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 £20.5million
British Pounds Sterling (Twenty million five hundred thousand British
Pounds) 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 relatves 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 six years the money will be transferred into banking treasury
as unclaimed funds.

We agreed that 35% 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 trust is our
watchword in this transaction.

Note this transaction is confidential and risk free. As soon as you
receive this mail you should contact me by return mail.
Please note that all necessary arrangement for the smooth release of these
funds to you has been finalised. We will discuss much in details when I do
receive your response.Please if you are interested in this project contact
me for further directives.

Best regards

Mr.Charles Greene


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