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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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Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: marc.cozen@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2015 10:55:16 +0100
Subject: info

Dear,

I am Mr. Marc Cozen, the new Head of Foreign Operations Department of Ing Bhf-Bank Aktiengesellschaft. I was recently posted here from our Head office.

I write to inform you about a bank draft bearing your name in one of the closed files in my office for a sum of $5,500,000 (Five Million, Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars) with attached payment instruction, to be paid to you since September 2013.

On further inquires, I observed that this payment was not made and the fund was transferred into the bank's unclaimed funds account.

This was due to your non-reply of notification emails sent to you by the bank dated 02/09/2013 and 10/10/2013 respectively, informing you about the fund US$5,500,000.00 bequeathed to you by our deceased customer.

Contact me for the steps on how to redeem the inheritance funds.


Yours sincerely,
Mr. Marc Cozens
Foreign Operations
Ing Bhf-Bank Aktiengesellschaft


-----------------------------------------

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Anti-fraud resources: