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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: MINISTRY FINANCE <ministryfinance475@gmail.com> (may be fake)
Reply-To: <ministryfinance927@yahoo.fr>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:10:14 +0200
Subject: IS THIS TRUELY YOUR E MAIL/URGENT REPLY




FROM THE DESK OF MR.OJA JAMES
DEBTS PAYMENT OFFICE, THE PRESIDENCY
ADDRESS 447/448 CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT.
PMB 789, COTONOU, REPUBLIC OF BENIN
WEST AFRICA

Attn Beneficiary,

On the 15th of May last year an online email raffle draw was organised
by the federal government lotto and games commision under the auspices
of internal affairs to promote link between its citizens and other
citizens of the world.

The selection process was carried out through random selection in our
computerized email selection machine from a database of over 200,000
email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world and your
winning category falls within our African category so you are to claim
your money through our African claims agent .

The followings are your Identification numbers

Ticket Number........YT5895471
Ballot Number.........854789785/10
Winning Category..... Africa

Unfortunately, we discovered that your winnings in the sum of $2.5M was
returned to the finance ministry as unclaimed funds due to the fact that
you were contacted to claim your funds but didn’t respond at that time
or may be you did not get any winning notifications to claim it.

Now the government is embarking on old debts settlement scheme and
fortunately your email address appeared in the returned or unclaimed
funds file. This is what prompted this office to write to you, and know
if actually this mail belongs to you, so as to avoid paying to the wrong
beneficiary .

In view of the above explanations, you are requested to be sincere with
this office in this payment process , and you will be given the
guideline on how this payment could be made to you soon.

Your’s Sincerelly
Mr Oja James






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