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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: Barrister Mike Billy <barrimikebilly@yahoo.com.hk>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:50:20 +0800 (HKT)
Subject: From The Desk Of Barrister Mike Billy



>From The Desk Of Barrister Mike Billy
Mike And Associate Chambers,
25 Surang Road, Bangkok Thailand.
Email: barr_mikebilly@yahoo.com.hk
 
Dear Friend,

Please kindly accept my apology for sending unsolicited mail to you, I believe you are a highly respected personality considering the fact that I sourced your profile from a human resource profile database of your country. Though, I do not know to what extent you are familiar with events. Firstly, i offer my friendship, and greetings, and i hope this mail meets you in good time. However strange or surprising this contact might seem to you as we have not met before either physically or through correspondence, I humbly ask that you take due consideration of its importance and the immense benefit it will be to you.
 
For the purpose of introduction, I am Barrister Mike Billy, a Solicitor. I am the Personal Attorney to Late MR STEVEN HARRIS a foreign investor who died with his family ( wife and 3 children ) in a auto accident along Ratchada Express road in Bangkok on the 22nd of August 2006.

Since then I have made several enquiries  to locate any of my client's relatives, and this has proved unsuccessful. After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to trace his relatives over the Internet to locate any member of his family but to no avail, hence i contacted you. I contacted you to assist in repatriating the money left behind by my client in a Bank in Bangkok, Particularly the Bank where the deceased deposited the sum of US$ 25, 000,000.00 (Twenty Five Million United States Dollars).

This Bank issued me a notice to provide the Next of Kin or relatives of the deceased to claim the US$ 25 Million Dollars in their custody or else the fund will be declared unserviceable. Since I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives of the deceased for quite long now, I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin/Relatives of the deceased to claim the fund, so that the Bank can release the fund to you as your inheritance.

Upon receipt of the fund, I will come over to your country to meet with you for the disbursement of the fund. Then you and i will share the money in this order: 60%  for me, and 40% will be for you. I have all the necessary legal documents that can back our claim we will make with the Bank.

All I require is your honest co-operation to enable us seeing this deal through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.

You are needed as a next of kin to inherit the late deceased left fund.
 
For further details please Kindly contact me on this Email:  barr_mikebilly@yahoo.com.hk
 
Best Regards
Barrister Mike Billy ( Esq )


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