Advance fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain.
The most visible form is the Nigerian Letter or 419 fraud, named after the section of the Nigerian criminal code that it violates. Originally sent by mail, and later by fax, the Nigerian Letter is now sent almost exclusively by e-mail. A typical letter claims to come from a person needing to transfer large sums of money out of the country. As the Nigerian letter variation of the fraud has become well known, the gangs operating the scams have developed variations. The target is often told that they are the beneficiary of an inheritance or invited to impersonate a beneficiary of an unclaimed estate.
Not everyone in Nigeria is a scammer. Also, not every scam email comes from Nigeria. These scammers have branched out all over the world these days and are most commonly found in the other African countries like South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) Ghana and various others, as well as countries like the UK, Amsterdam, Spain, USA. Plus the East European bad types have picked up these kinds of scams and run with them now, so you have to watch out for scammers from places like Romania, Poland, Russia, etc.
The name of this scam can sometimes be the equivalent of telling people to watch out for tigers, and while they are busy looking for stripes in the forest, they step on a rattlesnake. You have to be careful of *any* email that comes to you as a surprise regardless of what country it claims to be from.
The top 10 signs that it may be a scam - click here
How do victims fall for these scams? - Read this article -
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