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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: TODD WILLIAMS <todd_williamsxx3@msn.com>
Reply-To: <ikoroduezeh@walla.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 23:49:12 +0000
Subject: FROM THE DESK OF TODD WILLIAMS (WITH TRUST)



FROM THE DESK OF TODD WILLIAMS Dear Friend , This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it could come into your mind but please consider it and accept it with a deep sense of humility. Before proceeding, I wish to introduce myself to you; I am Todd Williams a staff of Natwest Bank Plc here in London,United Kingdom. I am the head of the accounts department.I am pleased to get across to you for a very urgent and profitable business proposal which I believe will profit both of us on completion. I contacted you after a careful thought that you might be capable of handling this business transaction, which i explained below. The sum of ( £ 18,500,000.00 Million Pounds), has been floating as unclaimed since 2000 in my bank as all efforts to get across the relatives of our client who deposited the money have hit the stones. There is this immigrant Mr. Andreas Schranner, property magnate who was based in the U.K., who happens to be one of our very good clients. On the 25Th of July 2000, Mr. Andreas Schranner, his wife Maria , their daughter Andréa Eich, her husband Christian, and their children katharina and maximilian all died in the air France concord plane crash bound for New York in their plan for a world cruise. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm All attempts to trace his next of kin were fruitless. My position here at my office requires me to investigate and I therefore made further investigations and discovered that Mr. Andreas Schranner did not declare any next of kin or relation in all his official documents, including his bank deposit paperwork in my bank.According to the British Law. The money will revert to the ownership of the British government if nobody applies to claim the fund. To avoid this money being sent to the British treasury as unclaimed funds, I have decided to seek your assistance to have you stand as his next of kin so that the said fund ( £ 18,500,000.00 million pounds), would be released in your name as the next of kin to the deceased. Please get back to me if you are truly interested so i could give you details of how to go about the claim for this fund. Do not bother writing if you are not interested anyway. God bless you. Mr Todd Williams.

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