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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: =?UTF-8?Q?Family_Tree_=E2=80=93_Final_Notice!?= <forum@sbcplc.xyz>
Reply-To: Senior.Associate@consultant.com
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 00:51:47 -0500
Subject: Ref: Information About Your Family Tree =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=93=20Fin?=
=?UTF-8?Q?al=20Notice!?=



--
Ref: Information About Your Family Tree – Final Notice!

This is our second but final attempt to reach you in view of this
subject matter.When someone dies without leaving a will and there’s no
known relative to inherit, the government receives the money. Unless, a
previously unknown distant relative; a descendant from the same ancestor
is found within a limited time frame at the discretion of the treasury
department to claim the inheritance as laid out in section 46 of the
Administration of Estates Act of 1925
As stated in our previous letter, we are legally empowered to track and
reunite unclaimed funds with distant relatives of people who have died
without making a will or known next of kin and after an extensive
genealogical research effort, we have traced a dormant termed deposit
bank account with your family name and the account has a substantial
amount of money on it now tagged “unclaimed funds” which you are legally
entitled to. The bank is compelled by the laws to hand over the funds
(as unclaimed funds) to the government if no claim is made immediately.

Apparently, the funds belongs to one of your family members who
reportedly died intestate some years ago leaving behind a substantial
amount of money in the bank account unattended.The money is yours (or
your family’s), not the bank’s nor the Government’s. It’s legally yours
on positive proof of your identity being a distant relative of the
deceased on forth degree (“statutory legacies”), a descendant from the
same ancestor before the bank is compelled by law to hand the money to
the government.Important Note: we have been retained by the bank to
administer the estate and reunite you with the dormant account because
you have been identified and located as the only suitable heir apparent
to the estate with the same last name and our initial consultation is
free, yes, it’s free but we will charge a contingency fee of 5% of any
sum recovered from the bank. Which means you will not pay us a cent
unless we recover money for you and you owe it to yourself and your
family at least to explore this rare life changing opportunity.It might
interest you to know that every year thousands of people (especially
foreigners) die without leaving a will or known next of kin thereby
forfeiting so much money to the government as unclaimed estate. There is
a time limit at the discretion of the Treasury Department when claiming
such inheritance hence the need to act swiftly to reconcile this
account.In a recent news report, “there is currently more than $30
billion in unclaimed money and with the total of unclaimed money rising
faster than people claiming, it is projected that in the year 2020 there
could be as much as $40 billion of unclaimed money.

Aging population is adding more significantly to this number”. This is
what prompted us to locate you and legally empower you to claim the
estate before it becomes too late.In compliance with standard
requirements of the federal disclosure and privacy laws which prohibit
us from revealing certain privileged information without due process, we
intentionally left out certain information which we deemed proprietary
at this point and to enable us double-check our record and ensure that
you are indeed the addressee of this letter, we need you to reconfirm
your information by providing us with your full names (no initial
please); your date of birth; your current occupation; contact address
and your telephone/fax numbers. Once we reconfirm your information and
endorse same appropriately, we shall provide you with all the privileged
information/legal documents relating to the deceased customer and his
term-deposit account and also will give you guidelines on how we intend
to realize this goal without the breach of the law.We would respectfully
request that you treat the content of this letter as privileged and
respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this
correspondence.

Thank you
Waiting for your reply.
Yours Sincerely
Tinashe Makoni
Senior Associate

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