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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: gerald lawson <geraldlawson2001@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 19:23:12 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: urgent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Dear Colleague,
I fasted for three days and three nights before choosing you as the person to do this business with,so please take it with an open mind,as you are already blessed.

I want to propose a very interesting deal to you.I work with Deposit Trust and Security company as the operations manager.  Actually,there is one very big customer of our company,he is an american by name Elijah Miller,he had $252,000,000.00(two hundred and fifty two million)united states dollars with our company and I was his representative in our company.  Last three months he came and collected $2,000,000.00(two million dollars)cash and said if he arrives in his country he was going to send us his banking details,so that we can remit his remaining balance of $250,000,000.00.But I have not heard from him since then.  Just three weeks ago his secretary that he came with to our company,called me and said Mr. Elijah had instructed her to send me the bank account were we are to remit the remaining $250million,because he(elijah)he had an accident.She sent me all the necessary confidential documents and said Elijah gave it to her,so there was nothing we could do but to start remittance of the fund bit by bit.  But before we started remitting the money,I called Elijah's line and his wife picked up the phone and to my greatest surprise,she said Elijah had died in a car crash a month ago.That was when I understood that the secretary must have stolen all those documents from his office vault immediately he died and she is now claiming the funds on his behalf,but I kept quite so that I can also get my share.  I have made a perfect plan with the remittance director,who is my only partner in this deal because of his position.We are crediting the account she sent with just $2.5million per week,with the excuse that the government will not allow more than that to go out per week.Which is a lie to slow down the remittance so that we can get someone to use in making claims also.What we want you to do now is to supply us your banking details so that we can  credit your account as elijah's partner and you can take 25% of the total amount credited to your account and give us the rest as our share.  Please consider this proposal quickly and reach me immediately with your answer,because time is not on our side.

I am waiting your reply as soon as possible.

Engineer Gerald LAWSON.

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