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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: "National Westminster Bank" (may be fake)
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2018 11:31:05 -0000
Subject: Important Alert

Dear Customer,

While performing customers account maintenance and verification procedures, we have detected a slight error in your account information. For security reasons, we have temporarily restricted access to your account and certain features within our online banking system, such as (Receive payments, Make payments or withdraw funds) as a security measures.

This might be due to either of the following reasons:

. A recent change in your personal information. (eg: address, phone).
. Submitting incorrect information during online payment process.
. Logging from an unrecognized machine or device.

Due to this, In-order to keep your account active and protected against unauthorised use at no cost, we require you to complete our account verification process and this will only take you a few minutes to complete. It will help us in safeguarding your account & personal information from unauthorised access in future.

Continue

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.

Please Note: If your account information is not confirmed and verified within a certain period of time then your ability to access your account would become restricted. If you are unable to complete our request within 24 hours, please contact us immediately or visit one of our local branches.

Yours sincerely,

National Westminster Bank Online and mobile banking Security Team

Calls may be recorded.

Anti-fraud resources: