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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: Steve Cola <stevecola010@ssummail.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:40:50 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Try to give this letter good understanding.

Try to give this letter good understanding.

Dear Friend,

First of all i want you to give this latter good understanding if you can guarantee me from your own side, your trust, honesty, i will be able to work with you, i will appreciate if you can come down yourself and see things for yourself before we can proceed and this will make things more clearer for us.

I am Mr.Steve Cola, an accountant with one of the bank here in (Ivory Coast) I am writing in respect of a France Citizen ( Mr.Bouchout Geoffroy) been a customer here in our bank,dual citizen of France , who died in a Plane crash on Monday 2ND September 1998 GMT 14:22 UK while they were flying from New York to Geneva.

Refer to the website below for more details.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9809/swissair.victims.list/index.html

I wish to inform you that late Mr.Bouchout Geoffroy left the sum of Eight million United States Dollars ($8million) here in our bank, I investigated this out during our last auditing as chief accountant, that is why i solicit your urgent assistance for this so that we should work together and get this fund transfer into your safe account and invest with this money in a tangible business there in your country,

Based on the code of conduct in our work, we are not allowed to own or run a foreign account while still on service, it was as a matter of this fact I decided to contact you so that you will stand as the fund beneficiary after we may agreed to work together and ask the bank to transfer this fund into your account.

So my good friend, I want you to come and stand as the beneficiary to claim that money as a patina/beneficiary So that this money will be transferred into your account and we will use this money and invest in your country or we will share the money fifty fifty after transferring it if you did not want both of us to have joint business. I have all the formalities to legalize it on your name. Note that all the modalities of this transfer are RISK FREE hence i am working with this bank.

Upon your acceptance to assist me i will forward to you the legal procedures of how to effect the transfer into your account ,looking forward to hearing from you soonest.

Best regards.

Mr.Steve Cola.

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