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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

• About the 419 (Advance Fee) scam
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• Phone numbers used by 419 scammers
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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.

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.

Fraud email example:

From: "Lottery Award Notice" <awardprocessing@msn.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:30:02 +0000
Subject: ONLINE LOTTO WINNINGS

Royal British Unlimited
P O Box 657
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)

WINNING NOTIFICATION OF ONLINE LOTTO WINNINGS:

We happily announce to you the draws of Royal British Unlimited
Lottery, an International Web Sweepstakes Program held on Friday 26th
August, 2005.
Your email address attached to ticket/serial number IE6098-05, with serial
number IE535-29 drew the lucky numbers: 1-15-24-37-42-50 (bonus no.
33), With Ref. Number: IES/376O05/77, Batch Number: 05/507/IES360 and
subsequently won
the lottery in the 1st category.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £880,000.00
(Eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling) in cash credited to file
ISPR/7563409218/05. This is from a total cash prize of £8,680,770.00
sharedamongst the first nine (9) lucky Winners in this category.

All participants for the online version were selected randomly from
World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over
154,000 Unions,Associations and Corporate Bodies listed online.

In view of this, your £880,000.00 (Eight hundred and eighty thousand
pounds sterling) would be released to you by any of our payment offices.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information
confidential till your claims is processed and your money remitted to
you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our
precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of
this program. Deductions from WINNING SUM are not allowed until WINNING
SUM has been handed over to the winner. Please be warned. To file for your
claim,please contact our fiduciary agent:

Royal British Unlimited
P O Box 657
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)
Email: awardclaim@3xl.net

All prize money must be claimed in ten working days. After this date,
all funds will be returned as unclaimed.

NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please
always remember to quote your reference and batch numbers in every
correspondence with your claims agent. Furthermore, should there be any
change of your
address, do inform your claims agent as soon as possible.

Please include your private telephone and fax numbers while replying.

Congratulations once again from our team of staff and thank you for
being part of our promotional program.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Helen Woods
Lottery Coordinator
----------------------------------------------------------

Note: Anybody under the age of 17 is AUTOMATICALY DISQUALIFIED and Any
BREACH of CONFIDENTIALITY on the part of the WINNERS will result to
disqualification.

Anti-fraud resources:

• What can you do when you receive 419 spam