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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: "RICARDO" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <mariaricardoo4@yandex.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 22:20:57 +0100
Subject: READ AND REPLY

From: Maria Ricardo
Email: mariaricardoo4@yandex.com


Good Day,
I am Mrs. Maria Ricardo; I am the Administrative manager at a Vault of a Financial & Security Institute here in Barcelona.
I am contacting you based on a financial opportunity I discovered here in our bank. It’s about an abandoned sum of 26.7m Euro (Twenty six million seven hundred thousand Euro) in our safety deposit vault, that belongs to one of our foreign customers, a citizen of your country that shares the same last name with you, who died along with his entire family on 11th March 2008 in a ghastly car accident in Porto Portugal
The banking policy can only allow the release of such funds to a benefactor through an application as next of kin to the deceased. After his death, the bank has been expecting a possible beneficiary, but no luck, this institute has exploited all its ethical possibilities in other to contact his possible relation or inheritor, but no success. Since no one has come up since six years, I have made my own research with the help of a private investigator, it is my knowledge that this man has been living in Barcelona for the past 22yrs and has never returned back home. I also learnt that his wife and 13year old daughter died with him during this accident. I am almost 110% sure that no one is aware of the existence of these funds.


CONTACT ME FOR MORE DETAILS.
Email: mariaricardoo4@yandex.com
Yours Sincerely

Mrs. MARIA RICARDO

Anti-fraud resources: