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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 Sawdu Bello <mr.sawdubello019@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2015 20:12:47 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Dear Friend,


  Dear Friend,
First, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly CONFIDENTIAL AND TOP SECRET. However after series of petition was received by this present regime from foreign contractors and inability of the Society Ivorian Bank (SIB) to fulfill their obligation for the payment to its foreign creditors, in conjunction with the council of ministers, they mandated us to carry out a careful and comprehensive review of all overdue payments to foreign contractors and to effect payments immediately.

During the above mentioned process, we discovered an abandoned sum of US$12,800,000. (Twelve Million Eight hundred thousand US dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in a plane crash that happened in Gao Northern Mali,West Africa.
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim.

Please I want you to visit the website below for more information about the Plane Crash:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/10987946/Air-Algerie-plane-disappears-with-116-on-board-live.html
It is therefore upon this discovery that I and other officials in my department now decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill.

I agree that 40% of this money will be for you as a foreign partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, and 50% would be for me, while 10% will be for expenses incurred during the transaction. There after I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated.
Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you as arranged, you must apply first to the bank as relation or next of kin of the deceased indicating your bank name, your bank account number, your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location wherein the money will be remitted.

Upon the receipt of your reply, I will send to you by email the text of the application to fill and send to the bank. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch-free risk and this transaction will only take us 14 banking days because as a banker, I know what to do and move the fund into your account without any delay, you should not entertain any  fear as all required arrangement have been made for the transfer.
You should contact me as soon as you receive this letter so that I will send you the text of the application to apply to the bank and the data information of the deceased customer.


For further details.
Mr  Sawdu  Bello
Bill & exchange manager,
Societe Ivorienne Bank (SIB)
Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire.

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