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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: "Dr. Usman Bello " <usmanbello7000@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:33:27 +0100
Subject: *****SPAM***** VERY URGENT


------------------ Début de Rapport SpamAssassin ---------------------
Ce message est probablement du SPAM (message non sollicité envoyé en
masse, publicité, escroquerie...).

Cette notice a été ajoutée par le système d'analyse "SpamAssassin" sur
votre serveur de courrier "mail.univ-tlemcen.dz", pour vous
aider à identifier ce type de messages.

Le système SpamAssassin ajoute un en-tête "X-Spam-Flag: YES" aux
messages qu'il considère comme étant probablement du Spam.
Vous pouvez si vous le souhaitez utiliser cette caractéristique
pour régler un filtre dans votre logiciel de lecture de courrier,
afin de détruire ou de classer à part ce type de message.

Si ce robot a classifié incorrectement un message qui vous était
destiné, ou pour toute question, veuillez contacter l'administrateur
du système par e-mail à the administrator of that system .

Voir http://spamassassin.apache.org/tag/ pour plus de détails (en anglais).

Détails de l'analyse du message: (9.6 points, 5.0 requis)
-1.8 ALL_TRUSTED Passed through trusted hosts only via SMTP
3.5 BAYES_99 BODY: L'algorithme Bayésien a évalué la probabilité de spam
entre 99 et 100%
[score: 1.0000]
3.2 FH_DATE_PAST_20XX The date is grossly in the future.
2.1 SUBJ_ALL_CAPS Le sujet est en majuscules
1.2 ADVANCE_FEE_2 Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
1.4 ADVANCE_FEE_3 Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
0.0 AWL AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list

-------------------- Fin de Rapport SpamAssassin ---------------------



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