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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. Eric Wang"<ericwang5092@gmail.com>
Date:
Subject:

Hello Email User,

Compliments of the season, i hope you are in good health. I am a banker with a financial institution here in China and I am writing to
you for an opportunity that will benefit us both immensely. I have discovered an unclaimed inheritance fund of Five Million Five Hundred
Thousand United States Dollars Only and I wish to lay down your name as the next of kin to the amount in question due to the death of the
depositor who died years ago along with family.

However, i assure you that will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law both in
your country and here in china once the fund is transferred to your bank account. The funds i am referring to is right here in this bank
floating in a suspense account, therefore i solicit for your cooperation to be in collaboration with me to have this done. If you
are interested in this transaction, I will need you to provide the following information urgently to enable the attorney to start the
processing of all the relevant legal documents for the money remittance. All i want you to do for me now is to give me your Name:,
Address:, Tel :, Age:, Sex :, Occupation: so that i can give you more details.

Send email to : redacted@domain.name

I urgently hope to get your response as soon as possible

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Eric Wang
From: Treasury Dept.
Ecitic Bank of China.

Anti-fraud resources: