Advance Fee scams, also known as 419 scams are highly prevalent, especially by scammers in Nigeria who operate this scam on an industrial scale.

There are many variations, but it is a simple scam – they offer a fortune of some kind, then when someone falls for the bait, they have an elaborate story about how they have got or will get the money and need just a little help in getting the money out of their country or away from the bank etc.

Once a victim is hooked, then a series of small payments are needed to get the fortune.

Of course, there is no fortune, just a victim who will be conned repeatedly until he or she realises it’s fake and that there is no fortune.

This latest email is a very simple one with no effort to look realistic, but sadly these can still attract some people desperate for money.

The sender claims to be in the U.S. Marine Corps and recently was part of an operation in Asia and netted a lot of money in a raid on the opposition. (You can see this is deliberately vague so the scammer doesn’t have lots of details to remember).

Now, she needs a man or woman to help her repatriate the money and will pay a large percentage for that.

Strangely, this scam also goes down the romance route as she claims to want to find a man to have a long term relationship with.

Confused as that is – that’s all the information in the message.

She asks for a photo by return and wants to talk by Whatsapp only.

This has all the hallmarks of a large scale scam operation with each scammer no doubt dealing with perhaps dozens of victims at a time.

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