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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: "Rev. Vanessa Brooks" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <vkbrookz@icloud.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2017 10:29:46 -0500
Subject: Calvary Greetings To You !!..

I am Rev. Vanessa Brooks, kindly forgive my manners of approach to communicate with you through this medium perhaps its a global village and I had just take the courage out of my ill health I am a cancer victim and I have few days to live and I wish to entrust a charity project to an honest and God fearing person since I can't do all this activities myself anymore having been a Philanthropist and a Merchant we have a project towards the less privilege , I know this may sound so strange to you and also extremely risky for me to offer such proposal to a total stranger on a public site but this happened to be my last resort to get this done and I will tell you more and explain better if you contact me  vankellbrooks@gmail.com . I hope to hear back from you if you are interested and then we can take it from there as I don't have much time to be here.
 
Thanks.
Rev. Brooks.

Anti-fraud resources: