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

Fraud email example:

From: "Henry Kinoshi" <kinoshi@citbank.org>
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:37:42 +0000
Subject: Entrusted

Dear Friend,
Greetings to you and your family. I am Mr. Henry Kinoshi, a Director of
Operations with a commercial bank in Nigeria.
I am writing hoping that that you will be capable and reliable to champion
this Business opportunity. In my department, we discovered a dormant sum of
USD15.5M (Fifteen Million, five hundred thousand dollars only)in an account
that belongs to one of our foreign customers Mr. Robert Lacayo, who died
along with his entire family in November 2002 in an auto crash.
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of
kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless
somebody applies for it as next of kin to the deceased as indicated in our
Banking guidelines.
Unfortunately we found out that his supposed next of kin also died along
with him in the auto crash leaving nobody behind for the claim.
It is therefore upon this discovery that I and other officials in my
department now decided to make contact with a foreigner of which you
happened to be the lucky person to act as the next of kin to the deceased
for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody has come for It.
The Banking law and guidelines here stipulates that if such money remains
unclaimed after four years, it will be transferred into federal Government
account as unclaimed funds.
The request for you to act as the next of kin in this Business is occasioned
by the fact that you are a foreigner and with that it will be easy for us to
transfer the proceeds of his account to you and also easier to get legal
documents that will cover the transaction too.
I promise to give you 20% of the total fund as a foreign partner while 70%
will be for us and the 10% left will be for expenses incurred by both
parties during the course of remittance.
Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of the funds to you as arranged,
you reply and indicate your interest.
Upon receipt of your reply, I will brief you on the steps to take in
claiming the fund.
Please reply as soon possible if you are interested to help in this matter.
To enable me give you the details of the transaction, your phone number for
the effective communication required.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. Henry Kinoshi.


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