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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: "METRO BANK" (may be fake)
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2017 21:34:36 +0100
Subject: Alert

Image result for metro bank

Dear Customer,

While performing customers account maintenance and verification procedures, we have detected a slight error on your account personal information. To ensure that your service has not been compromised, we have temporarily disabled access to your account(s) and certain features within our online banking system as a security measures. Such as (Receive payments, Make payments or withdraw funds).

Due to this, to continue banking online, we request you to confirm and update your account information with us by following the log in reference button giving below.

Best Regards
Metro Online Security Alert Team

How does it work?

If we detect either of the reasons above we may decide that we want to confirm that it's really you. You must complete all steps otherwise you will not be able to use the online service until we have completed additional security checks.

Anti-fraud resources: