419 scam

Spam scam offering riches but costing you cash

The 419 scam, aka the 'Letter from Nigeria', is a form of Advance Fee Fraud, a modern variation on the 'Spanish Prisoner' scam which dates back to the 16th century.

The scam arrives in the form of a spammed email, often claiming to come from a relative of a senior politician, lawyer or businessman in a third-world country, who apparently has access to large amounts of money. The recipient is offered a share of the money - often millions of dollars -if they can help move the money out of the country. The victim is then lured into putting up some seed money to pay for lawyers, bank charges etc., which can often amount to thousands or even hundreds of thousands in itself. Of course, the story is entirely fabricated, the millions of dollars do not exist and the victim ends up with nothing.

The scam takes its name from the Nigerian law against such fraud, as many early versions originated from Nigeria. The scam has evolved to use a wide range of lures including treasure found in Iraq by US soldiers, lottery winnings and charitable donations, and many hundreds of victims around the world have been defrauded of large sums of money. There are even reports of victims having been lured to the scam's originating country where they have been imprisoned, tortured and occasionally even lost their lives.