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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: "Mr. Cliff Hill" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <cliffhill668@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 04:22:43 -0700
Subject: PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL??

JOHANNESBURG
SOUTH AFRICA
TEL: +27 83 981 1611
Email. cliffhill668@gmail.com
             
                                                            PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
ATTTENTION,
 
I am Mr. Cliff Hill, chief executive of NEDBANK South Africa, my partner and me has decided to contact you because there is an account opened in this bank in 1998 and since 2005 nobody has operated on this account again. After going through some old files in the records, we discovered that if we do not remit this money out urgently it would be forfeited to the government for nothing. The owner of this account is Mr Smith B. Andrew, a foreigner, and a miner at a Gold Company, a geologist by profession and died since 2005. No other person knows this account or anything concerning it, the account has no beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that the company does not know anything about this account and the money in this account is USD 25,000,000.00 (Twenty-Five Million United States Dollars).
 
I am only contacting you as a foreigner because this money cannot be approved to a local bank here but can only be approved to any foreign account because the money is in United State Dollars and the former owner Mr. Smith B. Andrew a foreigner too. I know that this message will come to you as a surprise as we don’t know ourselves before, but be sure that it is real and genuine business. I got your contact from internal affairs department with believe in God that you will never let me down in this business, considering my position as a public servant. So please reply me urgently so that I will inform you on the next step to take immediately. Send also your private telephone number and email address including the full details of your account to be used for the deposit. We would want us to meet face to face to sign a binding agreement to bind us together.
 
Meanwhile, I am contacting you because of the need to involve a foreigner with a foreign account and foreign beneficiary. I need your full co-operation to make this work fine because the management is ready to approve this payment to any foreigner who has the correct information of this account, which I will give you soon as you indicate your sincerity to co-operate with me, and capability to handle such amount in strict confidence and trust according to my instruction and Advice for our mutual benefit because this opportunity may never come again in my life. we need your strong assurance and trust that you will not let us down and With our positions in the office we don’t want anything that will Jeopardize our jobs so we advise that we should make secrecy and confidentiality our primary working condition, bearing in mind that we am a public servant we will also use our position and influence to effect legal approvals and onward transfer of this of this money into your account wit h appropriate clearance f
 
Yours Sincerely
 
Cliff Hill
 

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