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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: "Larry Bam" <rockwood22223@gmail.com>
Reply-To: rockwood22222@aol.com
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:03:23 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: FYI 20-07-2010




Dear Friend,

First, I must apologize in advance if the contents of this email does not
meet with your approval, I humbly crave your indulgence.

My name is Mr. Larry Bam, I recently retired as the chairman of the
contract award committee of the department of housing, Pretoria, South
Africa. This committee was in charge of awarding contracts on behalf of
the department of housing.

To cut a long story short, in the course of our award of contracts, we
helped a contractor secure a contract for the building of housing units in
Soweto, South Africa. We helped him by informing him of the government
reserve bid for the contract in question.

The said contract has been executed perfectly and according to the
specifications given by the government and the contractor paid off.The
contractor wants to show appreciation by giving us with a certain amount
of money.

We need a proxy to collect this money for us, hence this proposal to you.
This transaction does not require any financial commitment of any sort
from you. All you need to do is to collect this fund on our behalf and we
will reward you handsomely.

I am presently in UK on a retirement vacation. I can be reached via email
on rockwood22222@aol.com for more details.

Like I stated earlier, this transaction does not require any financial
commitment from you and also note that we did not solicit for this money
in any form.

I await your response if you are interested.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Larry Bam.

Anti-fraud resources: