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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: "Mr. Ronald T. Hosko" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <ronald_hosko@e-mail.ua>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:17:32 -0600
Subject: Hello.....

F.B.I Headquarters Washington DC.
601 4Th Street, N.W Washington DC.
20533, USA
 
Dear Sir/Mir,
 
I am Ronald T. Hosko,the personal secretary to the FBI Director; Roberts. Mueller III. After proper investigations, we discovered that your impending payment that have been withheld by imposters for a very long period of time, claiming to be who they are not, But with the Help of FBI we have been able to trace them.
Investigations revealed that you have spent a lot of your personal earned money just to conclude the successful transfer of your funds to your nominated bank account by obtaining transfer documents as requested by the impostors, costing you a lot of money but to no avail.
The FBI had to send some financial crime investigators from our head quarters in Washington DC to London, Western Part of the World (Africa) in other to carry out proper investigation, after receiving series of other reports similar to yours as you are not the only person awaiting the legal transfer of funds from Africa.
With the help of some of the best Internet investigators attached to the FBI, we traced your information from the Internet as one of the beneficiaries of this Inheritance Funds. I am pleased to inform you that a meeting was held as regards the best way to carry out with the compensation exercise for transparency and most especially to avoid re-occurrence of the delay in transferring your funds and the high cost of procuring transfer documents and came to a final conclusion as all head of organizations involved was duly represented. Your Funds worth $9.5,00,000.00 USD (Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand United states Dollars) Only will be release to you in my Supervision.
 
Reconfirm your delivery information as stated below.
DELIVERY INFORMATION:
FULL NAME:
DELIVERY ADDRESS:
OCCUPATION:
AGE:
CELLPHONE NUMBER:
 
Note: You are to forward any email received from those Scammer to my email address so we can be able to trace them and eradicate them from cheating innocent people.
 
Mr. Ronald T. Hosko.
For: Mr. Robert S. Mueller III
FBI DIRECTOR
 

Anti-fraud resources: