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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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Fraud email example:

From: "Mr.Emmanuel Bouga" <ebouga1@yahoo.ca> (may be fake)
Reply-To: emmabouga1@yahoo.ca
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 10:59:41 +0000
Subject: Special Offer


From: Emmanuel Bouga
Standard Chattered Bank,
Accra-Ghana

Attn: My Dear,

I am Emmanuel Bouga, working with the Standard Chattered Bank, Accra-Ghana as the manager. On the course of the last year 2004 end of the year's report, I discovered that my branch in which I am the manager made Three million, Two Hundred Thousand US Dollars (3,200,000.00) as an excess profit. This fund is currently lying unclaimed in my bank’s NUSTRO 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 stand as the beneficiary to receive this money into your bank account, I shall provide you the pin-code of the deposit when the time comes since I am the only person who knows about this deposit. You shall be given 30% of this fund for your committed effort while 65% shall be for me and 5% shall be for contingences. I do need to assure you that there is 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.

I will appreciate your timely response.

Yours truly,

Emmanuel Bouga


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