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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: "Hon.William James" <root@plink.it>
Reply-To: fgn1500@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 05:10:10 +0200
Subject: Change Of Ownership Alert--


Attn;

I'm Hon. William James, the Chief Director of Finance Officer of the
Ministry of Finance. We wish to urgently confirm from you if actually
you know one Mrs. Cynthia Edward who claims to be your business
associate/partner.

Kindly reconfirm this application put in by Mrs. Cynthia Edward - she
submitted the under listed bank account information supposedly sent
by you to receive the funds on your behalf.

The bank information she applied with are stated thus:

Account Name: Cynthia Edward
Bank name: Citi Bank NA
Bank address: #1230 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, USA
Account Number: 013439887655
Routing Number: 2771722
Swift Code: CITIUS30

The said Mrs. Cynthia Edward has claimed to this office that you are
dead and have Instructed that all relevant documentation/Information
regarding your Payment/Transfer, be changed to her as the beneficiary
of the payment short-listed among the foreign beneficiaries entitled
to receive their payment.

For your Information, this Government has approved the total amount
of EIGHT MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS ONLY,
in your favor, prior to the Federal Government instructions/mandate
to offset all outstanding payments to the various legal foreign
beneficiaries around the world and your payment file was affected. We
need to confirm from you if it's really true that you are dead as
made mention by your Associate.

You should note that, if we do not hear from you, we automatically
assume that you are actually dead and the information passed to us by
Mrs. Cynthia Edward is correct. Hence, you are hereby requested to
reply this Email immediately for confirmation, before we proceed with
this payment and for us to know the true position of things with you
so that we won't make any mistakes/errors in remitting your
out-standing payment to a wrong person/account.

Lastly, you are advice to reply back this email and reconfirm the
details of this message if truly you're alive.

Full name....................................

Direct telephone number......................

Address......................................

Age..........................................

Occupation...................................

Country......................................

Bank name....................................

Bank address.................................

Bank account.................................

Account type.................................

Your quick response will help us a lot.

Yours, Sincerely,
Hon.William James.

Anti-fraud resources: