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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: "Eric Rankin" <eran212@att.net>
Reply-To: <proverbs1@voila.fr>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 03:44:48 +0100
Subject: Important from HSBC London.

Dear Sir/Madam,

With full Personal/Corporate responsibility under Penalty of Perjury, I would like to propose a mutual business relationship with you as follows:

As a Private Investment Manager with HSBC Bank in London, the United Kingdom; I was privileged to meet the late President of the Republic of Guinea, when he confidentially deposited a Consignment containing 200,000 Carats of Rough Diamonds and 350 Kilograms of Gold Bars in Assets Account with my Bank. Fortunately/unfortunately the late Mr. Conte was the sole beneficiary for this deposit.

Since there was no other beneficiary to the Account who can formally notify the Bank for claims, it's impossible that the Bank will notice the Account except I as the Officer who handled the transaction; but having waited convincingly after his death, I decided to move the deposit into a suspense Account without beneficiary and then find a reliable Partner who can work with me to withdraw this wealth.

Being an Official of the Bank I cannot directly claim/withdraw this deposit, thus I am impelled to request for your assistance to receive the proceeds into your bank Account as we shall officially trade the commodities at LME according to the current World Market prices. I have already submitted an audited approved end of the year Report for the year 2007/08/09 to our Bank head office without the deposit, so the deposit is quite secured now. I propose we share the proceeds equally 60/40%.

Let me stress here that there are practically no risks involved in this transaction, the transfer will be done via bank-to-bank once the Commodities are traded into Cash. However, we need to maintain confidentiality to protect the transaction and avoid raising eyebrows. I will send you details of the process to legally transfer the proceeds into your Bank Account without any problem.

Please include you direct contact information for onward discussions.

Sincerely Yours,

Mr. Erasmus James.
London, UK.

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