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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: Thomas <wu12@wumt080.onmicrosoft.com>
Reply-To: <westernnunion@qq.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 13:27:37 +0200
Subject: Re: Read carefully

Re: Read carefully,

We write to inform you officially that the Board of Director of the Debt Reconciliation Center,In conjunction with the Federal Republic of Nigeria,Federal Ministry of Finance Nigeria and The International Monetary Fund IMF is compensating all the scam victims $2.7M USD each, and your email address was found in the scam victim's list. This Western Union office has been mandated by the IMF to transfer your compensation to you via Western Union Transfer.

We need your information as where we will be sending the funds, such as,

Receiver name:
Residential Address:
Country:
Phone number:
Your Age:
Your Sex:

Note that your payment files will be returned to the IMF within 72 hours if we did not hear from you, this was the instruction given to us by the IMF.

Thanks
Rev Thomas Anderson
+234 8181 865796

Anti-fraud resources: