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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: "Mustapha Bashire" <mus_bashire14@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: mustapha_bashire@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:45:49 +0000
Subject: Most Urgent

Mr. Mustapha Bashire,
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
West Africa.

Dear Friend,


My name is Mr. Mustapha Bashire, and I am a staff in the Auditing Department
of one of the Financial Institutions here in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. In
my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$5.7M dollars in an
account belonging to one of our foreign customers. Who died alongside with
his entire family on Monday, 31 July, 2000 in a plane crash in paris.

Please visit the site as an evidence:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm

Since after his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come
forward and claim this money because we cannot release it unless some body
applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in
our banking guidlings and by law, but unfortunately, we earnt that all his
supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him in the plane crash
leaving no-one behind for the claim.

It is therefore upon this discovery that, I and my colleagues decided to
make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next
of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement
since no person is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the
bank treasury as unclaimed bill.

The banking law and guidlines here stipulates that, if such money remained
unclaimed after eight years, the money will be transfered to the bank
treasury account as unclaimed fund. The request for a foreigner as next of
kin in this business is occassioned by the fact that the customer was a
foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner in this
regard.

We agreed that, 25% of this money will be for you as a respect to the
provision of a foriegn account, 5% will be for expenses incurred during the
trasaction, 10% orphanage homes any where in the would and 60% would be for
me and my colleagues.

Thereafter, we will visit your country for disbursement according to the
percentage indicated Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of this
fund to your desiggnited bank account, you must apply first to the bank as a
relation or next of kin of the deceased with a text of application
that we will send to you and location here the money will be remitted to.

Un receipt of your reply, I will send to you by email the text of
application as all required all required arrangements has been put in place
for immdiate transfer of this fund, you should contact me, as soon as you
receive this letter, your swift response will be highly appreciated.

Trusting to hearing from you soonest.

M. Mustapha Bashire,
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

_________________________________________________________________
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