Scam 419:
The so-called scam 419 is a fraud invented in Nigeria and performed by thousands of scam artists.
It's called “Advance fee fraud” or “4-1-9” scams, after an old Nigerian criminal code for theft under false pretenses.
Millions of people all over the world have received emails from pseudo-Nigerian authorities saying that they had large sums of money and that they needed a bank account off-shore to launder said large sum of money, generally many millions of dollars. Many people have believed their story and lost lots of their own money. Some even lost their lives trying to recover their money. This is tragic for the victims. On another plain, it's surreal. And weirder than any science fiction plot."
