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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: "Christina Balogh" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <k.baloghz@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2015 18:21:01 -0500
Subject: Good evening, i hope you are having a good week

Greetings to you,
I am diagnosed with cancer and i have just few weeks to live. I am widowed with no children. My husband was a wealthy man before he passed away and i inherited all his assets when he passed on few years ago, his family hates me because i was showed so much love and affection by my husband and because he did not include them in his will.
Now i have few weeks to live, i am not strong enough to distribute this money to charity like i have always wanted to and the doctor said i can die at anytime, i cannot trust my attorney to leave him with such an amount of money ($10.5
million dollars) that is why contacted you so that you can be in charge of this. I will introduce you to my lawyer and i will tell him that you will be in charge to distribute the funds to any charity of your choice, all he has to do is to make sure things work out fine the way i want it, but you have to be the one in charge of the funds, so in that way i can die in peace.
I am looking forward to hear from you.

I will send you my international passport for you to confirm my real name and identity.

God bless you
Krisztina

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