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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: US ARMY SPECIAL ENVOY <agentfredrick360@gmail.com>
Reply-To: fredshaw32@outlook.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:52:26 -0800
Subject:


*Beloved , *
*I will not be surprised if you ignore this message because you might’ve
already received similar emails. You will find it difficult to believe me
due to the atrocities that people are committing against humanity on the
internet such as: lies, scams, deceitful actions and other bad intentions.
Now it is hard to identify the rotten eggs out of thousands. *

*Nevertheless, My name is Fred Shaw. I lived in Washington DC. I am married
with only a child. I served as US Army special envoy to Syria. I’m
currently in Syria with my teams, working with the Syrian force(s) to help
protect the oil fields from the ISIS groups. Apparently, I do not have any
formal relationship with you, for that reason, You might be wondering why I
contacted you today. Well, my main purpose of reaching out to you today is
to share the challenges I am facing alongside my encounter. I lost my wife
to cancer during my first year here in Syria and she’s currently in the
mortuary. I have made several efforts to fly back to Washington DC to
retrieve my wife’s corpse from the mortuary for a befitting burial, but all
the efforts I made failed due to flight restrictions here in syria*

*My greatest concern for reaching out to you today is that, since the
demise of my wife, I haven’t communicated with my daughter and her
whereabouts remain unknown to me. I have tried too many times to reach out
to her through email but I found out that all the messages I sent to her
were returned undelivered due to a serious attack on internet connection
here in SYRIA, making it hard for us in Syria to reach out to anyone in
Washington DC via email. I’m hoping that you would be kind enough to help
me reach out to my daughter via email, to know if she is alive or dead
since I can’t message her directly.*

*Please Get back to me once you receive this message and let me know if you
can help to reach out to my daughter on my behalf. Message me on my
personal email address: Fredshaw32@outlook.com <Fredshaw32@outlook.com>*

*Yours sincerely,*
*Fred Shaw, US Soldier and special envoy to Syria. *

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