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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 Robin Mackness" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <info.robinmackness@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2023 05:28:00 -0700
Subject: My Dear Friend,

Greetings:

I am sorry to intrude into your private and peaceful life. My name is Mr. Robin Mackness, a British; I am senior accountant with a Finance House here in Spain and also account officer of late Mr. Morris Thompson (SNR) who died on January 31st, 2000 (83 passengers and five crew members) on board Alaska Airlines Flight 261. Please view the website below for verification. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/ While returning to his country from a business trip.

He have a deposit with us and a closing balance worth US$15.6Million, having heard of the tragic incident involving late Mr. Morris Thompson (SNR) we expected a next of kin as beneficiary to visit us but no one. Valuable efforts have been made by the House to get in touch with any of his family member but I personally found out that, until his death he neither had a wife nor children known to us.

Meanwhile above is the website of the people who died in the Alaska Airlines Flight 261, the only name of next of kin given to us by late Mr. Morris Thompson unfortunately was with him in the same flight that crashed, and this is unknown to my office. I'm taking this advantage as his personal account officer; I decided to seek your permission to have you stand as next of kin to late Mr. Morris Thompson, so that the fund (US$15.6M) will be released in to your account as the next of kin. All Documents and proves to enable you get this fund will be carefully worked out.

I wait for your prompt response so that I can give you more briefing of what you need to and how to do it.

Thanks in anticipating your co-operation.

Best regards,

Mr Robin Mackness
info.robinmackness@gmail.com

Anti-fraud resources: