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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: "Dr. Cheng Cho." (may be fake)
Reply-To: <chocheng2012@qq.com>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 21:03:14 -0800
Subject: CONFIDENTIALITY : Business

>From the desk of: Dr. Cheng Cho, Bank of china, Shenzhen, Peoples Republic Of China. chocheng2012@qq.com I am Dr. Cheng Cho, Bank Manager of Bank of China, Shenzhen Branch, China. I have urgent and very confidential business proposition for you. A British Oil consultant/contractor with the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation, Mr Raymond Beck made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at Thirty Million US dollars in my branch. Upon maturity, I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered from his contract employers, the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation, that Mr. Raymond Beck died in a plane crash along with his wife Mrs Doreen Beck in Egypt Air Flight 990, 1999 air crash (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/502503.stm). Since we got this information about his death. On further investigation, I found out that he died without making a WILL and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruit

Anti-fraud resources: