If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The so-called "419" scam (aka "Nigeria scam" or "West African" scam) is a type of fraud named after the article of the Nigerian criminal code under which it is prosecuted. Here is a typical example.
Typically, victims of this scam are promised a portion of a large sum of money sitting in a bank account or in a deposit box at a security company, simply for providing a bank account to transfer the money into or for posing as a relative of a deceased person. If they fall for the scam they are made to part with thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in "bribes" for local officials before the "partners" disappear without trace. Read more about this type of scam here.
jwSpamSpy, our spam filter for MS Windows 2000 and XP ™, recognizes and filters almost all "419" spam emails. Tens of thousands of such mails that were sent to us have been analyzed and archived. jwSpamSpy filters about 17,000 more "419" mails from our mailboxes every month.
The following addresses were used for 419 scam emails sent up to early May 2004.