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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: =?utf-8?q?From=20Stephen=20Raphael?= <raphaelstephen02@yahoo.com.ve>
Reply-To: private4stephenraphael1@o2.pl
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:58:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: WE SEEKS GOING INTO JOINT INVESTMENT WITH YOU


¡Tengo nueva dirección de correo!Ahora puedes escribirme a:raphaelstephen02@yahoo.com.ve



- Greetings to you my good friend, I am Mr. Stephen Raphael. I work with one private Security Firm located in Accra-Ghana, working as administrative Officer. Having worked for this firm for past nineteen years without good salary or owned a private Investment to boost of, within this period, I have watched with meticulously precision how African Heads of States, government functionaries, Politicians and Foreign Contractors been using our Company to lodged and move out huge sums of monies in USD, Pound sterling, Euro and Gold for their Investments in overseas, this people bring Consignments Boxes of RAW CASH and declared the contents to us as gold, diamond, precious stones and family treasure. Two years ago, our Management sent out Warning Notices to every of the depositors address since most of them are not coming forward to make claims for more than ten years and the Company’s law stated that any Consignments in our vault existed over 7 to ten years will be destroyed or be hand over to the Government as Abandoned Consignment whereby the owner failed to come Forward. to our surprised non of the owners showed up till date. As the administrative Officer of the Company I officially made more inquiries on their whereabouts and in result; I discovered that most of them are no more alive while their Consignments still lying here Unclaimed without anyone coming. On this development, the Board of the Directors ordered us to go ahead with the destruction excise. Though I wasn’t happy for such arrangement but there is nothing else I could do to stop act, than to do accordable. Firstly, I initiated this transaction to our Vault Manager who in charge of all these Consignments and we agreed on moving out (one) Consignment Box and I personally took the Box to where it was Scanned only to find out it contents to be Money in US 100 Bills note, inside it, there was a written paper indicating the total Money involved to be (USD 7.5 MILLION DOLLARS). This MONEY was of course, acquired by one AFRICAN LATE PRESIDENT died long ago and the Money in question is directly in our possession where no one can lay hand on it while we request you to stand as our foreign representative that can receive this Money and invest part of it into lucrative business like real estate and others investment on our behalves in your Country. We will come over and have round table meeting with you upon our resignation. Please will like you to keep this proposal as a top secret or delete it if you are not interested. Upon receipt of your reply, we will send you full details on how the business will be executed. We shall discuss the sharing ratio between the parties involved and assuring you that you will have a course to smile at the conclusion of this transaction as it is very secure and risk free only that all we needed is your assurance and sincerity before furthering with you. Please do get back to us as quick as possible. Thanks, Stephen Raphael.


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