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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: "Mr. Rex W. Tillerson"<buh@steklo-service.kz>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2017 23:35:45 -0800
Subject: *****SPAM***** U.S DEPARTMENT OF STATE.


This mail is probably spam. The original message
has been attached intact in RFC 822 format.

Content preview: U.S Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520.
[...]

Content analysis details: (22.5 points, 6.3 required)

0.0 RDNS_NONE Delivered to trusted network by a host with no rDNS
3.4 FH_DATE_PAST_20XX The date is grossly in the future.
1.8 SUBJ_ALL_CAPS Subject is all capitals
1.6 MISSING_HEADERS Missing To: header
1.8 MILLION_USD BODY: Talks about millions of dollars
1.2 US_DOLLARS_3 BODY: Mentions millions of $ ($NN,NNN,NNN.NN)
0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
1.7 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
2.9 RCVD_IN_XBL RBL: Received via a relay in Spamhaus XBL
[37.49.227.222 listed in zen.spamhaus.org]
0.0 FORGED_OUTLOOK_TAGS Outlook can't send HTML in this format
4.0 NIGERIAN_BODY100 Looks like Nigerian Scam (custom test)
0.0 FORGED_OUTLOOK_HTML Outlook can't send HTML message only
4.2 FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK Forged mail pretending to be from MS Outlook
-0.0 AWL AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list

The original message was not completely plain text and may be unsafe to
open with some email clients; in particular, it may contain a virus
or confirm that your address can receive spam. If you wish to view
it, it may be safer to save it to a file and open it with an editor.


Anti-fraud resources: