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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: Webmaster <test2@vcanland.com>
Reply-To: <no-reply@webmaster.org>
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 07:48:25 +0700
Subject: Alert: Account Security!!!!

Dear User;

We are updating our database and e-mail accounts. To this effect, deleting all unused E-mail account and create more space for new accounts. To ensure that you do not experience service disruption during this period, you need to provide the following details as stated in the link below;

To re-validated your account, click the link below or copy paste on your web browser

http://targetmktg.info/phpform/use/deee/form1.html

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account before two weeks of receiving this warning may lose his or her account permanently.

Thank you for using our mail system

System Administrator.

Anti-fraud resources: