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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: "Yahoo&Microsoft"<award@microsoft.com>
Reply-To: <ag.andreas@live.com>
Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 13:34:07 +0100
Subject: ***SPAM*** (10.277): Official Notification


This mail is probably spam. The original message has been attached
along with this report in the event that it is not spam. If it is not,
please forward this message in its entirety to support@microsage.com
with a short message letting us know that it is not spam and the reason(s)
and we will research it for you.

Thank you,
MicroSage Postmaster

Content analysis details: (10.3 points, 5.0 required)
1.3 UNDISC_RECIPS Valid-looking To "undisclosed-recipients"
0.0 NO_REAL_NAME From: does not include a real name
1.7 MSGID_FROM_MTA_ID Message-Id for external message added locally
0.0 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 40 to 60%
[score: 0.5000]
1.6 DNS_FROM_RFC_POST RBL: Envelope sender in postmaster.rfc-ignorant.org
0.1 MSGID_FROM_MTA_HEADER Message-Id was added by a relay
1.7 SARE_CHARSET_W1251 Non-English character set
3.9 FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK Forged mail pretending to be from MS Outlook



Anti-fraud resources: