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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: "BARCLAYS" (may be fake)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 03:03:06 -0000
Subject: Important Message

Barclays Personal Banking

Barclays     Your Account Access & ATM Card Has Been Suspended.

For your protection, due to unusual activity in your account(s), certain functionality may be temporarily disabled until you restore functionality by following the reference below. This is intended to prevent potential misuse of your personal information or financial assets.

This might be due to either of the following reasons:

1. A recent change in your personal information. (eg: address, phone)
2. Submitting incorrect information during login process.
3. Logging from an unrecognized machine or device.
4. Too many incorrect login attempts.

https://bank.barclays.co.uk/olb/auth/membership/account/update/

To better protect your accounts and information, we required you to be careful in your Feature Transactions.

Thank you,

Your Barclays Team.

Anti-fraud resources: