Internet scam is well known fraud, scammers used to deceive and cheat people. It is also known as advance fee fraud or scam that originated in West Africa and in its simplest form the fraudster will offer to facilitate the receipt of a sum of money or loan, providing a fee is paid in advance to cover certain expenses and fees. Documentation with false letterheads, fake telephone numbers is always presented as an attempt to authenticate the transaction. 

The variety of these type of scam are the West African scam e.g. Burkina Faso email scam (inheritance transfer scam) Nigerian Letter, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer), the Spanish Prisoner, the black money scam as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam. Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly different organized-crime traditions and they tend to use altogether dissimilar kinds of approaches.

Embassies and other organizations warn visitors to various countries about 419 fraud. Countries in West Africa with warnings cited include Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Togo, Senegal and Burkina Faso. Countries outside West Africa with 419 warnings cited include South Africa, Spain, and the Netherlands. 

Scammers play a confidence trick with people; it is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A trickster or con artist used to exploit characteristics of the human psyche such as greed, both dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, irresponsibility and the thought of trying to get something of value for nothing or for something far less valuable. Tricksters or Con artists have victimized individuals from all walks of life.

Email Scam:

Scammers send emails and used to show they are sending it to the selected recipient but actually sent to many people, making an offer that would result in a large payoff for the victim. The e-mail's subject line often says something like "From the desk of Director, Auditor, Accountant, Barrister or Son of.., Foreign Remittance unit, Promotion award/prize department”. They write false names and start writing in this manner, "Your assistance is needed" or "Urgent reply needed”, and so on. 

The details may vary, but the usual story is that a person, often a government or bank employee, knows of a large amount of unclaimed money or gold which he cannot access directly, usually because he has no right to it. Such people, who may be real but fictitious characters played by the tricksters, they could include the wife or son of a deposed Indonesian or African leader or dictator who has combined a stolen fortune, or a wealthy foreigner who deposited money in the bank and died in a plane crash (leaving no will or known next of kin), or a bank employee who knows of a incurably sick wealthy person with no relatives, a business being audited by the government, a refugee, a corrupt government official who has misused funds, and similar characters.

 The money they used to offer could be in the form of a series of checks or bank drafts, gold dust, money in a bank account and so forth. The investor is promised a large share and the sums involved are typically in the millions of dollars, usually ten to forty percent, if they assist the scam character in reclaiming and recovering the money. At the same time as the huge majority of recipients do not respond to these e-mails, a very small percentage do, enough to make the fraud useful as many millions of messages can be sent. Always the sums of money considerable are much smaller than the promised profits, and are said to be required in advance for bribes, fees, etc. this is the way to steal money from the victim, who thinks he or she is investing to make a huge profit.

In Nigeria many functions are professionally organized, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The victim who tries to research the background of the offer often finds that all pieces fit together. Scammers can repeatedly attract wealthy investors, investment groups, or other business entities into scams resulting in multi-million dollar losses. Many scammers are operating independently; such scammers have reduced access to the above connections and thus have little success with wealthier investors or business entities attempting to research them, but they are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses. They can deceive individuals and trick hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.

 Many free e-mail services do not require valid identifying information, and also allow communication with many victims in a short span of time. E-mails are the preferred method of communication for scammers; some services disguise the sender's source IP address and it can make the scammer completely untraceable even to country of origin. Scammer can create as many accounts as they wish and often have several at a time. Additionally, if e-mail providers are alerted to the scammer's activities and they suspend their account then scammer create a new account to continue scamming.

Avoid Being Scammed:

Scammers pretend to be legitimate businesses, organizations or institutions and facilitate people by offering huge sum of money, these are all methods of scam, deception or fraud and try to take and grab money from people. Scammers do not give you time to think and tell you to pay immediate payment through Western Union. You will find here all the ways how scammers work and defraud people. There are some tips to help you avoid being scammed. If you receive an email saying you were selected through email or any other reason you have won a lottery, do not reply it is a scam. When dealing with investing your money with a company, whether it is in a 401k plan, or by forex trading make sure that you do the research on the company.  Are they monitored or regulated by any group? Are they in good standing in the country they reside in? How long have they been in business? These are questions that must be asked, and if the answer doesn't feel right to you...back away. Protect yourself from fraud by considering identity theft protection from now on.

I recommend that if you are receiving this kind of messages then cease all communication with the individuals concerned, report the matter to your local Police and urge you not to send any money if requested to do so. I will update all the scams.

Type of E-mail Scam:

Dear e-Mail Winner,

This is to inform you that you have won a prize money of ONE MILLION GREAT BRITISH POUNDS (1,000,000) for this month Donation which is organized by COCA'COLA COMPANY PROMOTION.

THE COCA'COLA COMPANY PROMOTION, collects all the email addresses of the people that are active online, among the millions that subscribed to Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, Rediffmail etc. we only select ten people this Month as our winners through electronic balloting System without the winner applying, we congratulate you for being one of the people selected. To begin the processing of your prize you are to contact our fiduciary claims Scarlet Courier Company department for more information as regards procedures to claim your prize.

Dr: Robert C Johnson
Email: scarletlondondept@hotmail.co.uk

Contact him by sending him with the under listed informations:

PAYMENT OF PRIZE AND CLAIM
1. Full Name: 
2. Address Line 1:
3. Address Line 2 (optional):
4. Sex:
5. Age:
6. Occupation:
7...Valid Phone Number:
8. City: State: 
9. Country:
10. E-mail

Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Bubb(Mrs.)

If you assist to reclaim scam they will send you their response in this manner:

THE COCA COLA ONLINE LOTTERY
PROMOTION/PRIZE AWARD DEPT
COCA COLA AVENUE STAMFORD
BRIDGE LONDON
SW1V 3DW
UNITED KINGDOM.

Congratulations Lucky Winner,

On Behalf of the Screening Committee of United Kingdom Coca-Cola Online Lottery, I wish to formally inform you that you have successfully passed the Email Screening and Verification Matching Test conducted for all online winners in your winning in accordance with the United Kingdom Coca-Cola Online Lottery Terms and Conditions. Hence you are therefore cleared for payment by the verifications and fund release department at the United Kingdom Coca-Cola Online Lottery Headquarters and your winnings has been duly signed and approved for release to you by the legal attorney to the United Kingdom Coca-Cola Online Lottery.

As you already know, all winners for the online version of the United Kingdom Coca-cola Online Lottery Online promotions were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from an exclusive list of 29,031 e-mail addresses of individual and corporate bodies listed online as part of our international promotion to promote international co-operation between the United Kingdom and other countries worldwide and I must say that you should count yourself extremely lucky to have emerged as one of our winners in this week's lucky dip sweepstakes and we do sincerely hope you will put part of your winnings into good use for community, educational and business development and also to render selfless services to the less privileged in your community.

The process for claiming your winnings has been made very simple so that by the end of one week at most, you are assured of having received your cash prize of the sum of £1,000,000 Pounds Sterling and all the legal documents backing your winnings. In the light of the above mentioned, you are to contact the the Agency that will be handling the transfer of your winning to you with the contact information below:

CONTACT INFORMATION.
================================
Shipping Agency
Scarlet Courier Company
Transit and Freight Department
Barrister. Fredrick White
E-mail:- slough@scarletlondon.co.uk

Telephone: +44 7017042166

Fax: +44 7006064987
================================

Note that you are to provide the Lottery Winners Agency that will be handling the transfer of your winning with the required details below to officially identify you:

1) Winner's Full Names:
2) Present Full Address:
3) Telephone Number:
4) Raffle Draw Winning Email:
5) Amount Won:
6) Winning Ballot Number:
7) Winning Ticket Number:

Note that there exists a periodic condition on all claims process; therefore you have limited time to claim your winnings. Failure to claim your winnings within the stipulated time frame will lead to the forfeiture of your winnings after which your winnings remitted back to the United Kingdom Coca-Cola Online Lottery Headquarters and will then be added to next winning draws. Also kindly be aware that the United Kingdom Coca-Cola Online Lottery winning prizes are regulated by the Financial Services Authority and as a result, you are advice to follow the Lottery Claims Terms and Conditions to ensure the remittance of your prize to you within the stipulated time of the claiming of winnings.

Further to this, due to some recent miss-up of some winning numbers, as a Prize winner and according to the United Kingdom Coca-cola Online Lottery Terms and Conditions, you are only privy to your winnings information and your winnings transfer information in order to avoid any form of double claiming and misappropriation of your winnings, hence the release of your winning information to a third party(friends and family members inclusive) is absolutely ruled out as this will lead give room to double claiming by a third party which is against the United Kingdom Coca-cola Online Lottery Terms and Conditions. You are hereby advice to keep your winning information personal from any third parties (friends and family members inclusive) until your winnings have been remitted to you.

Lastly, I will require a concise update on your proceedings with the Agency that will be handling the transfer of your winning. If you need any assistance whatsoever from this office, please do not hesitate to inform me.

Please contact immediately.

Signed, Robert C Johnson
Verification Award Officer