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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: "Anderson & Associates" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <andersonassociateslawyer@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:19:02 +0200
Subject: Re: We are not sure you received our previous letter

Hello,

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 that 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 Spain.

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 apparent heir 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.

In compliance with standard requirements of the federal disclosure and privacy laws which prohibit us from revealing certain privileged information without due process, we intentionally left out certain information which we deemed proprietary at this point and to enable us double-check our record and ensure that you are indeed the addressee of this letter, we need you to reconfirm your details which include but not limited to your contact information, your full names (no initial please) and your age range, (Date of Birth) as proof of maturity to handle a project of this magnitude. Once the endorsement is completed, we shall provide you with all the privileged information/legal documents relating to the deceased customer and his bonded 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,
Pablo Abad Anderson, Partner

Anti-fraud resources: