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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: Mrs Sofia Salif <safio_salif1@voila.fr>
Reply-To: sofia_salif@voila.fr
Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 05:27:00 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Greetings to you and your family.


Greetings to you and your family.
Greetings to you and your family i am the manager of bill and exchange in THE BANK , i have a business of 8million dollars to be transfer to your account for investment in your country if you are ready to assit me get back to me i will give you full details on how the money will be transfer to you.
You must assure me that everything will be handled confidentially because we are not going to suffer again in life. It has been 10 years now that most of the greedy African Politicians used our bank to Launder money overseas through the help of their Political advisers. Most of the funds which they transferred out of the shores of Africa was gold and oil money that was supposed to have been used to develop the continent. Their Political advisers always inflated the amounts before transfer to foreign accounts so I also used the opportunity to divert part of the funds hence I am aware that there is no official trace of how much was transferred as all the accounts used for such transfers were being closed after
transfer.I acted as the Account Officer to most of the politicians and when I discovered that they were using me to succeed in their greedy act,I also cleaned some of their banking records from the Bank files and no one cared to ask me because the money was too much for them to control
They laundered over $80Million Dollars during the process .As I amsending this message to you, I was able to divert Eight million Dollars ($8M) to an escrow account belonging to no one in the bank. The bank is anxious now to know who is the beneficiary to the funds because they have made a lot of profits with the funds. It is more than Eight years now and most of the politicians are no longer using our bank to transfer funds overseas. The $8Million Dollars has been lying waste but I don't want to retire from the bank without transferring the funds to a foreign account to ena ble me share the proceeds with the receiver. The money will be shared 60% for me and 40% for you .There is no one coming to ask you about the funds because I secured everything.
Yours Faithfully,
Mrs Sofia Salif


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