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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: "mail.btconnect.com" <helpdesk@btconnect.com>
Reply-To: techsuport@aim.com
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 05:05:31 +0200
Subject: Dear webmail.btconnect.com Account User,

Dear webmail.btconnect.com Account User,

There will be an upgrade in our system between August 1st - 31st 2010. Due to the anonymous registration of btconnect.com accounts and number of dormant email accounts, we will be running this upgrade to determine the exact number of active subscribers we have at present.

You are instructed to login to your webmail.btconnect.com email account to verify if your account is still valid and send immediately the following:

Your Email Address: ..........................(Compulsory)
Password: ....................................(Compulsory)
Date of Birth.................................(Optional)
State: ......................................(Optional)

Before sending your account details to us, you are advise to Login into this Link below: https://webmail.btconnect.com/

Note that if your account do Login, send us the details or otherwise it means it has been deleted. Sorry for the inconvenience this might cause you, we are only trying to make sure you don't lose information's in your email accounts.

All you have to do is Click Reply and supply the information above, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

Thanks for your attention to this request. Once again We apologize for any inconveniences. Warning!!! Account users that refuse to update their account after 5 Days of receiving this warning will lose their account permanently.

2010 © btconnect.com Email Account (webmail.btconnect.com)

Anti-fraud resources: