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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: Thomas Edeson <thomasedeson377@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:55:43 +0100
Subject: GENUE/URGENCY

FROM Dr. Thomas Edison

The Manager First Commercial Bank
29 Wilson Street, The City
London, EC2M 2SJ

Attn:

First I must solicit your confidence in this transaction, this is by
virtue of it's nature as being utterly Confidential and top secret and
I am assuring you that this is real
and genuine.

My name is Dr. Thomas Edison. I am the manager of First Commercial
Bank 29 Wilson Street Branch. I am a British Citizen married with two
kids. I am writing to solicit your assistance in the transfer of
£16.500.000.00.(sixteen million, five hundred thousand pounds)

This fund is the excess of what my branch in which I am the manager
made as profit during the last year. I have already submitted an
approved end of the year report for the year
2013 to my head office in Taiwan and they will never know of this excess.

I have since then, placed this amount of £16.500.000.00 on a suspense
account without a beneficiary.
As an officer of the bank, I cannot be directly connected to this
money thus I am impelled to request for your assistance to receive
this money into your bank account.

I intend to part 35% of this fund to you while 65% shall be for me. I
do need to stress that there are practically no risk involved in this.
It's going to be a bank-to-bank
transfer. All I need from you is to stand as the original depositor of
this fund.

If you accept this offer, I will appreciate your timely response.

Regards,
Dr.Thomas Edison.
Email: (t.edison@englandmail.com)

Anti-fraud resources: