Advance-fee scam
type of fraud where the victim unknowingly engages in one way trade with the perpetrator
An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is a common scam. The scam works by promising the victim a large sum of money in return for a small upfront payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that "An advance fee scheme occurs when the victim pays money to someone in anticipation of receiving something of greater value – such as a loan, contract, investment, or gift – and then receives little or nothing in return." There are many variations of this type of scam, including the Nigerian prince scam, also known as a 419 scam. It is popularly known as "yahoo yahoo" in Nigeria. The number "419" refers to the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud. The scam has been used with fax and traditional mail and is now prevalent in online communications such as emails. Other variations include the Spanish Prisoner scam and the black money scam.
Although Nigeria is most often the nation referred to in these scams, they mainly originate in other nations. Other nations known to have a high incidence of advance-fee fraud include Ivory Coast, Togo, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, and Jamaica.
“Advance-fee scam” enters the record as type of fraud where the victim unknowingly engages in one way trade with the perpetrator. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Advance-fee, scam and type can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q830193. The Library of Congress control number is sh2006001129. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Advance-fee scam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.