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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: "David Smith" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <private.desk@cantv.net>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 13:00:07 -0700
Subject: Very Important Message!!

Attn
 
We are not sure you received our previous letter wherein we expressed our grave concerns about an estate of a member of your family lineage who died intestate. As stated in our previous letter, the bank is at the verge of closing the account of high value which is now dormant belonging apparently to one of your family members who reportedly died intestates five years ago leaving behind a substantial amount of money in a bank account here in Uk.
 
 
In view of the above, we have been retained to administer the estate and would like to discuss certain privileged information with you accordingly because you have been identified and located as an only suitable heir apparent to the estate since you share the last name of the deceased. We would respectfully request that you treat the content of this letter as privileged and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this correspondence.
 
 
It might interest you to know that every year in United Kingdom, thousands of people (especially foreigners) die without leaving a will thereby forfeiting so much money to the government as unclaimed estate. There is a time limit at the discretion of the Treasury Department when claiming such inheritance hence the need to act swiftly to reconcile this account.
 
 
In a recent news report, "there is currently more than $30 billion in unclaimed money and with the total of unclaimed money rising faster than people claiming, it is projected that in the year 2020 there could be as much as $40 billion of unclaimed money. Aging population is adding more significantly to this number". This is what prompted us to locate you and legally empower you to claim the estate before it becomes too late and get confiscated.Presently, this estate, which has remained unclaimed for couple of years now and the estate will be converted to government treasury and therefore forfeited if nobody comes forward to lay proper claim to the deposit before the end of this financial quarter,In compliance with standard requirements of the federal disclosure and privacy laws which prohibit us from revealing certain privileged information without due process as practice and also indicated in the European Union banking guidelines applicable to in ternational monitoring fund.
 
We have decided to take this initiative rather than lose the entire deposit and as  a matter of urgency, we require you to send us your acceptance letter to enable us furnish you with more details on how to proceed with the inheritance claims.Once we confirm the letter from you,we shall go into negotiation on percentage also to help you provide you with all the privileged information/legal documents relating to the deceased customer and his term-deposit account and also will give you guidelines on how we intend to realise this goal without the breach of the law.
 
 
For further information, do not hesitate to contact us. We thank you for your attention and look forward to hearing from you shortly.
 
Waiting for your reply,
Yours Sincerely,
David Smith

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