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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: matt@thecadgroup.com
Date:
Subject: We have hacked your device!

Hey There,

We have compromised your device. To demonstrate you we have full access to it we have sent you this message from your own email account (see the "from" email address). We furthermore know that one of the passwords you used to use is "thecgi01" for instance. Don't panic, we will explain how it all happened and what you can do about it.

Some time ago you went to a website with xxx content, that website had a trojan that was developed by us, this trojan downloaded itself onto your device launching a backdoor that grants us complete access into your device. Altering passwords will not help since our backdoor will constantly remain open if we don't close it our selves.
We furthermore saved all your social contacts, e-mail contacts, data and information to our server. Furthermore we activated your cam from time to time and recorded clips of you while you "pleased" yourself watching mature content on the internet. Those videos are also saved on our server. As you can see we now have all your information and various "naughty" clips of you.
You are probably asking yourself what we are going to do with this content. Perhaps we make use of it to destroy your social life by sending all the information we have with browser history and the nasty clips of you to all your social and mail contacts. Imagine the negative impact this will have on your life! Think of how this will affect the relationship with your loved ones! Or perhaps we erase it all, shut the backdoor on your device and don't use it and you can go on living your life like this never happened. It's all under your control....

When you opened this mail our system initiated a timer (our system monitors the mail header to see when you opened it), from now on you posses 6 hours (6 hours is 6 hours, not a moment more) to undertake the following action:

Below you will see our bitcoin address (copy/paste it, it's case sensitive). If you don't want us to destroy your social life and relationship with your loved ones you need to transfer $610 (USD) to it. You can browse Google how to buy bitcoins, it is very simple and you can do it instantly. Keep in mind that you should do this inside of the given time-frame so you better do it right this moment.
Our system is monitoring this address, when the transaction appears in time the timer will stop counting, we will remove all the info on our server we posses on you, the backdoor on your system will shut down and you will most definitely never hear from us again... case closed and not one person needs to know about your nasty secrets. If it doesn't come in in time, your life will change in a highly unfavorable way.

Our bitcoin address: 38j8EreGniGRAqdh4px6AV8iqPiNQkdsMW

Best of luck!

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