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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: "NIGER STATE"<info@nigerstate.gov>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 20:18:41 -0800
Subject: [SPAM-6.9]- OFFICIAL NOTICE

DoubleCheck®, running at "localhost.localdomain", has identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message has been attached to this so you can view it.

If you have any questions, see http://www.nmgi.com/doublecheck/ for details.

Content preview: Dr.Abdullahi M. Suleman Secretary Niger State May 29, 1997 and May 29, 2008 Contract Award Judicial Commission of Inquiry Minna ,Niger State P.O Box [390] Tel:+2347093435587 9th March, 2010 Attn: Honorable Contract Award Fund Payment Beneficiary [...] 

Content analysis details:  6.9 points, 5.0 required
 pts rule name              description
---- ---------------------- ------------------------------------------
-0.0 NO_RELAYS              Informational: message was not relayed via SMTP
 2.1 SUBJ_ALL_CAPS          Subject is all capitals
 1.3 MISSING_HEADERS        Missing To: header
 0.7 SARE_MONEYTERMS        BODY: Talks about money in some way.
 0.0 BAYES_50               BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 40 to 60%
                            [score: 0.5000]
 1.2 ADVANCE_FEE_2          Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
 1.7 SARE_CHARSET_W1251     Non-English character set
-0.0 NO_RECEIVED            Informational: message has no Received headers
-0.0 AWL                    AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list

Anti-fraud resources: