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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: "Helen Woods" <verificationoffice18@msn.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 03:37:48 +0000
Subject: WEB NOTIFICATION OF LOTTO WINNINGS

Online English/Irish Roulette
P O Box 657
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)

ONLINE WEB NOTIFICATION OF LOTTO WINNINGS:

We happily announce to you the draws of Online English/Irish Roulette,an
Online Web International Program held on Monday 2nd Janaury, 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 claim 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 handedover to the winner. Please be warned.

To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:

Online English/Irish roulette
P O Box 657
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)
Email: onlineenglishirishroulette@iwon.com

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


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