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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.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: David Jackson <drdavidjackson2000@gmail.com>
Reply-To: davidjack20001@outlook.com
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2017 04:43:32 +0100
Subject: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Our Ref: RTB /SNT/STB
To: Beneficiary

This is FBI special agents, David Jackson. I was delegated along side
others by the United Nations to Africa to investigate fraudsters who
has been in the business of swindling foreigners especially those that
has one form of transaction/contracts and another in Africa. Please be
informed that in the course of our investigation, we detected your
name and other details in our Scammed Monitoring Network, we got to
find out that you were scammed a huge sum of money by fraudsters via
Western union and MoneyGram. So, in this case,the United Nations has
mandated that you must be compensated with the sum of Two Million Six
Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($2,600,000.00 USD) for been a
victim.

Note that the said fund will be transfer to you via the Citibank being
the paying bank mandated by the United Nations officials.

However, we have to inform you that we have been able to arrest some
of the swindlers who has scammed you of your hard earned money. Please
be informed that we have limited time to stay back here, so we will
advice you to urgently respond to this message ASAP. And do not inform
any of the people that collected money from you before now about this
new development to avoid jeopardizing our investigation. All you need
to do is to follow our instruction and receive your compensation
accordingly as directed by the United Nations.

We urgently wait to receive your response.

Regards,
DAVID JACKSON
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
INVESTIGATION ON ALL ONLINE WIRE TRANSFER

Anti-fraud resources: