Promised of Million dollars or won a lottery? Stay away from the 419 fraud scam

September 25, 2007

Today as I was just going through my emails, I came across 2 mails that would make anyone excited. The sender promises to share millions of dollars. Read them here:

From: alice dennis <alicedenniskamokai_3@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 4:21:31 AM
Subject: Strictly Confidential

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.
FROM: MRS ALICE KAMOKAI
TELL : + 27-73-038-41-03
PRIVATE EMAIL ADRESS
ALICEDENNISKAMOKAI O_O@YAHOO.COM
ATTN: CEO/DIRECTOR
Compliments of the day. I am writing to you with much respect and honour to this letter, which must remain private and confidential. I know my roposal will come to you as a surprise since you do not precisely know me. Anyway, my mind accepted you and I believe that this proposal will bring mutual benefit for both of us.

Let me use this medium to introduce myself to you, I am MRS ALICE KAMOKAI , the wife of Alhaji Mustapha KAMOKAI, the former chairman of Diamond National Mining Co-operation and once the Director of Works and Housing before his untimely death. My Husband associated himself with coup plotters that ousted the government of Ahmed Tijan Kabbah on the 25th of May 1997 and was executed including ten (10) others. As a result of his death and uncontrollable war in my country, Sierra Leone, my children and I decided to seek asylum in South Africa where my Husband had deposited US 7.5m (Seven Million five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) for us.

We now want to use this money for investment in your Country since we do not have anybody to assist us. Therefore, I am asking for your urgent assistance to forward this money into your country using very Confidential and reliable means in which I will offer you 30% of the total amount for your king assistance. However, This money is safely kept in a Security Company before my husband death under disguise as precious items and nobody has any slight knowledge of what is inside the box deposited with the Security Company. In other words, there is no risk involved and so not hesitate to ask questions where necessary.

All the documents covering the deposition of the money with the Security Company are intact with me. For more information, please contact my son DENNIS on the above phone number and do well to provide me with your private phone numbers for security reasons. I am looking forward to hear from you immediately you receive this latter.

Best regards,
MRS ALICE KAMOKAI.
MR DENIS MY SON
FOR THE FAMILY

and this Email:

From: Marlene Smith. <nettimeclaims26@hotmail.com>
To: nettimeclaims26@hotmail.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 8:21:57 AM
Subject: Congratulations, you won a lottery.

NET TIME LOTTERY
UNIT 7 VILLAGE BLUES
NO. 4 ZUMA CRESCENT
GAUTENG PROVINCE.

FROM: THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER, INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT,
REF: NET/3651246008/07
BATCH: 21/0012/OKO

RE: AWARD NOTIFICATION

ATTENTION:

Be informed that you have emerged a winner of our Lottery International Program that was drawn three days from the day of this notice.
Attached to ticket number 6,13,23,47,64 BONUS NO: 80 with serial Number 3113-04 matched the winning numbers 6,13,23,47,64 BONUS NO: 80 and consequently won our Net Online International lottery in the 3rd category.

Approved is a lump sum of One Million Two hundred Thousand Euro(1,200,000 Euro)in cash prize accredited to file REF NO. NET/3651246008/07 that should be released to you. This is from the total prize money of (18,000,000 Euro) shared among the fifteen International winners in this category. Participants were selected through a referral program and winners were picked by a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 names from Australia, New Zealand, America,Asia,Europe,Africa and North America as part our International Promotions Program. Participants are selected from individuals all over the world that do register on the Internet daily. This draw automatically qualifies you for our end of the year International Grand draw of (100,000,000 Euro) that will take place by the end of the year. Due to the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award strictly from public notice until your claim has been processed and your money released to you.

To begin your claim, please contact the Claims department:

THOMAS MAZIBUKO
(Claims Manager)
Phone: +27837535119
Email: claimsc@gmail.com

NB: Prizes must be claimed not later than 8 working days. After these stipulated days, all funds will be returned as unclaimed prizes and will channeled for charity. In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please remember to quote your winning reference batch numbers in every one of your correspondences with the claims officer. Congratulations and thank you for being part of our International promotions program.

Sincerely Yours,
Marlene Smith.
(NET TIME PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR)

This reminded me of a friend of mine who recently narrated me a story that he received such an email but luckily matters have not gone far ahead. As I know, he too is a smart guy enough to not shell out a single penny for this reason and was just responding for the sake of watching the fun on how that goes on. It’s fine as far as you know it’s a scam and is really much important that you know should never entertain such mails and they deserve a space in you SPAM folder.

These mails are actually operated by the Nigerian scammers. Such scams are called advance fee fraud or 419 fraud as per the Section 419 of the Nigerian Penal code.

So how do they operate?

• This scam usually begins with a form-letter e-mail sent to many target recipients making an offer that will purportedly result in a large payoff for the intended victim. (Just like the one above.)
• Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices.
• However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.
• If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side will first send several documents bearing official government stamps, seals etc.
• They then introduce a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as: “In order to transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?” or “In order for you to be allowed to be a party to the transaction, you need to have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more” or similar.
• More delays and more additional costs are added.
• In any case, the promised money transfer never happens. The money or gold does not exist and the victim then realizes this.
• The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet cafes equipped with satellite Internet.
• Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union. Reason being that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous.

You can find more on this information in detail here and here. LaTimes had a good article on this and also here are many such stories happening everyday.

Some must read email conversations on Scam-O-Rama. 1 , 2 , and more. And the Checklist.

So next time you get any such email, you know what is to be done. Just do not entertain them. Never respond to them and just mark them to spam.

Few facts need to be considered on winning a Lottery:

1. They don’t notify winners by email.
2. You can’t win without first buying a lottery ticket.
3. They don’t randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
4. They don’t use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
5. They don’t tell you to call a mobile phone number.
6. They don’t tell you to keep your winnings secret.
7. They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!

In case you want to take some action against this, here are the tips.

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