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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: Yahoo ! <jork-084@msn.com>
Reply-To: <mrbenbaker05@msn.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:33:16 +0000
Subject: =?windows-1256?Q?You_are_a_winner_of_yahoo_lottery_2009!!=FE?=



Messenger Yahoo! Lottery Results you won $800.000! Yahoo! Mail Congratulatesyou!Yahoo! Mail gives members random cash prizes. Today, your account israndomly selected as the one of 5 top winners accountswho will get cash prizes from us. We are happy to inform you that you havewon a prize money of (Eight Hundred Thousand Us Dollars ($800,000) for themonth of January, 2009. Lottery winner promotionwhich is organized by yahoo messenger.com everymonth. YAHOO, collects all the mail ID of the people that are online on yahoomessenger, among the millions that subscribe to yahoomessenger we only select five people every month as our winners throughelectronic balloting System without the winnerapplying, we are congratulating you for been one of the people selected.All participant were selected through a computer balloting system drawn fromNine hundred thousand E-mail addresses fromCanada, Australia, United States, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa andOceania as part of our international promotionsprogram which is conducted annually. This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of somemultinational companies as part of their socialresponsibility to the citizens in the communities where they haveoperational base.Furthermore your details (e-mail address) falls within our Britishrepresentative office in United Kingdom , as indicated inyour play coupon and your prize of US $800,000 will be released to you fromthis regional branch office in UK. 2We hope with part of your prize, you will participate in our end of yearhigh stakes for US $1.3 Billion international draw. HOW TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZEThese are your identification numbers..........Batch number.......................YHL 08992Lotto number........................YHL 96587Winning number...................YHL 09557To begin your claims, kindly contact the Accounting Officer at this emailaddress (mrbenbaker03@msn.com) You are required toforward him with the following details:1. FULL NAME 2. COUNTRY OF ORIGIN 3. PRESENT ADDRESS 4. SEX 5. DATE OF BIRTH 6. AGE 7. OCCUPATION 8. TELEPHONE NUMBER9. FAX NUMBER (IF ANY)10. MARITAL STATUS 11. WINNING NUMBER, BATCH NUMBER AND LOTTO NUMBER. 12 THE MONTH YOU WON..................................................... As soon as you contact the Officer, he will advise you on what to do inorder to get your prize money. Congratulations once more!!For security reasons, we advice all winners to keep this informationconfidential from the public until your claim isprocessed and your prize released to you.This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming andunwarranted taking advantage of this programme by non-participant or unofficial personnel. Yours Sincerely,Blake JorgensenChief Financial OfficerThe Yahoo.com staffYahoo.com http://www.yahoo.comYahoo! Lottery ResultsYahoo! Lottery is a free service that does not require you to registeror be a Yahoo!registered user before winning.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Add a Yahoo! contact to Windows Live Messenger for a chance to win a freetrip

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