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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

• About the 419 (Advance Fee) scam
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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.

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:

• An email address listed inside this email has been used in a known fraud before.
• The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
  • "fiduciary agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
  • "claims agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
• This email message is a fake lottery scam. Consider the following facts about real lotteries:
  
  1. They don't notify winners by email.
  2. You can't win without first buying a lottery ticket.
  3. They don't randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
  4. They don't use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
  5. They don't tell you to call a mobile phone number.
  6. They don't tell you to keep your winnings secret.
  7. They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!
• This email lists free webmail addresses. Use of such addresses is typical for scams. Lotteries, banks and any but the smallest of companies do not normally use such addresses. Criminals use them to anonymously send and receive email at Internet cafes.
  • notificationdept022@katamail.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)

Fraud email example:

From: "Helen Woods" <notificationdept34@sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:34:51 +0000
Subject: WEB NOTIFICATION OF £880,000.00

Millenium Golden Roulette
P O Box 717
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)

ONLINE NOTIFICATION OF LOTTO WINNINGS:

We happily announce to you the draws of Millenium Golden Roulette, an
International Web Program held on Monday 6th March,

2006. 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

handed over to the winner. Please be warned.

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

Millenium Golden Roulette
P O Box 717
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)
Email: notificationdept022@katamail.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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Anti-fraud resources:

• What can you do when you receive 419 spam