SCAM: Advance Fee scams are also known as “Nigerian 419″ scams. There is a lot of information about them on the web such as these websites: 419Scam.org, 419 Coalition Website. And the scam is fully explained on Wikipedia.
There are even websites for those who are so fed up that they want to fight back against these scammers through defensive and time-wasting tricks. Visit 419Baiter.com [Warning: Website contains harsh language.] Though the scam comes in many forms, they all have one thing in common… trick the soon-to-be victim into sending money in advance. The victim thinks they are getting something of much greater value in return. This scam has earned millions of dollars and has been around (in its present form) since the 1980′s. It has successfully targeted very smart and professional people of all ages. These scams are so common that we’ve stopped collecting any except the most unique ones. If you have a strange sense of human (as we do) and enjoy reading them, click here to download a pdf of 21 pages of them.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Beware of any email or contact via the web (or phone) that claims to have money, goods, or items of value for you. You’ll notice that these emails/contacts lack any personal information that identifies the recipient. They typically arrive without any link but contain the contact information of the person trying to reach you.
CAUTION: Though Advance Fee scams usually do not contain links to malicious websites or attached files, we have seen malicious emails that are disguised to look like the 419 scams! Therefore, we do not advise clicking any link or downloading any attached files because doing so may result in a computer infection.
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