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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: "GATES FOUNDATION" <test2@live.com>
Reply-To: melinda.billgates154@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 16:33:08 -0700
Subject: Re.

Good Day to your Entire Family,

I BILL GATES and my Ex-wife (Melinda French Gates) decided to donate the sum of $5,000,000 USD to you as part of our charity project to improve the 10 lucky individuals all over the world from our $1.2 Billion USD I and my Ex-Wife mapped out to help people. We prayed, searched over the internet for assistance and I saw your profile on Microsoft email owners list and picked you. Melinda, my ex-wife and I have decided to make sure this is put on the internet for the world to see, as you could see from the webpage above, I’m not getting any younger and you can imagine having no much time to live. Although I’m a Billionaire investor, we have helped some charity organizations from our Fund and you can verify below.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/15/bill-gates-plans-to-give-away-virtually-all-his-113-billion-fortune.html

To facilitate the payment process of the funds ($5,000,000.00 USD) which have been donated solely to you, you are to send the below details to melinda.billgates154@gmail.com;

Full Names:

Contact Address:

Telephone Number:

Occupation:

Country of Resident:

Email Address:

The above required information enables us to forward your payment information to the paying bank, we are hoping that you will be able to use the money wisely and judiciously immediately you receive it. Please you have to do your part to also alleviate the level of poverty in your region, help as many as you can once you have this money in your personal account because that is the only objective of donating this money to you in the first place.

Congratulations!

Healthy regards,
Bill Gates and Ex Melinda French Gates.

Anti-fraud resources: