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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: "Princess" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <pp8612750@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 22:58:42 -0700
Subject: PLEASE ASSIST MY FAMILY.

Dear, Sir/Ma I am Princess Mary Essien from Nigeria, here in West Africa. I desire to contact you on honesty and sincerity to assist me and my younger brother in transferring of our inheritance money of $15,000,000.00 (Fifteen Million United States Dollars), which we inherited from our late father King. Damaragbo Essien 11. we are motivated in contacting you and hope to gradually build trust, good relationship and confidence in you as we get to know you better. Well, my father died three years ago and left my mother I and my younger brother behind. He was a king, which our town citizens titled him long before his death. I was a Princess to him and I and my brother are the only people who can take Care of his wealth now because my mother is not literate enough to know my entire father’s wealth behind. He left up to $15,000,000.00 (Fifteen Million United States Dollars) which he told us was deposited Overseas and I don’t know how and what I will do to invest this money somewhere or therein abroad so my father’s kinsmen will not take over everything that belongs to my father and our family just because am a woman which they were planning to do without my present, because I am a female as stated by our culture in the town, I must say I am happy as I saw your contact which I strongly believe that by the grace of God, you will help me retrieve, secure and invest this money in your country. So please we want to know if you will be of assistance to us, but first of all, we want to get to know you better. We would offer you 10% of the total money for your assistance, while 15% would be for every expense that might occur in the process of retrieving the money from the security company for our investment. Please indicate your interest in this offer to enable us to tell you more about how the transaction would be done. I will furnish you with more details on how we can proceed. I am ready to pay 10% of the total amount to you if you help us in securing this money and another 10% interest of Annual Income to you for handling this business and our investment for us, which you will strongly have absolute control over till I am through with my studies. If you can handle this project sincerely and also willing to assist me in lifting this fund, kindly reach me and I will let you know the next step to take towards actualizing this transaction as quickly as possible. Please, note that this transaction is 100% risk-free on your side. Thanks, and may God bless you as you assist us. I look forward to hearing from you soonest. Yours sincerely, Princess Mary. Essien

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