"Advance fee fraud", also known as Nigerian fraud, Nigerian scam or just 419 scam originated from Nigeria in mid eighties.

These scams involve scammers extracting money from innocent people by making false promises and luring the people to get benefits from fraudulent schemes. They generally ask to make some advance payment to get the huge returns from these opportunities.

Though this scam was initially originated in the Nigerian region it is spreading to other parts of the world too. Many African and European cities have become safe heaven for scammers to operate Advance Fee Scam.

Initially scammers use to target big heads like church officials, heads of companies etc. but lately they are targeting even general public through online facilities like email, instant messages, social networking message board etc.

The scams like: credit card scams, purchase scams, overseas fake advertisement scams, lottery scams, college admission scams, contest scams, employment scams, internet job scams, charity scams, loans and grant scams, credit card scams, internet dating scams etc. also fall under advance fee scams.

Advance fee scams are sometimes very dangerous and life threatening too. They take confidence of innocent people and invite them to their country to meet government officials and have first hand information about the schemes. Once victims visit the country they hold him for ransom and rip him of huge money.

There are cases where victim is murdered for not accepting to pay ransom.

Despite plenty of awareness programs and publicity of the advance fee scam lot of people still are victims to these scams. It is spreading like a wild fire in the various African nations and also other parts of the world.

United States have taken strict measures against these types of scams. In fact the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued public alert urging people to inform them about such scams to spam@uce.gov.

Even the United States Department of the Treasury has setup a task force advising people to inform them about any 419 document by mailing details to 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov.

Best Wishes,