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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: "Colin and Chris Weir" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <colinandchrisweir@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:21:42 +0200
Subject: REJOICE WITH US!

Deary,

We are writing to inform you that My wife and I won £161m Euromillions jackpot on the 12.07.11 and have voluntarily decided to donate the sum of £1,000,000.00 GBP to you as part of our own charity project to improve the lot of 25 lucky individuals all over the world.

On the receipt of this email, you should count yourself as one of the lucky individuals/recipients.More so, do get back to us so that we can send your details to the payout bank.

Kindly visit the web pages below for further verification.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/869440-euromillions-winners-colin-and-chris-weir-we-didnt-sleep-all-night

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3697016/EuroMillions-winners-Colin-and-Chris-Weir-161653000-smackers.html

Regards,
Colin and Chris Weir
colinandchrisweir@gmail.com
2012.

Anti-fraud resources: