Scammer Peter Williams is jumping up and down, somewhere in Africa. But first the story to read:
From The Desk Of
Mr. Peter Williams,
Manager Audit Account Dept,
Bank Of Africa
Good Day.
I am Mr. Peter Williams Manager Audit/Accounting Department BANK OF AFRICA U.B.A, I would like to know if this proposal will be worthwhile for your acceptance have a Foreign Customer, Manfred Hoffman from Germany who was an Investor, Crude Oil Merchant and Federal Government Contractor, he was a victim with Concord Air Line, flight AF4590 killing 113 people crashed on 25 July 2000 near Paris leaving a closing balance of Ten Million five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($10,500,000.00) in one of his Private US dollar Account that was been managed by me as his Customer’s Account Officer.
Base on my security report, these funds can be claimed without any hitches as no one is aware of the funds and it’s closing balance except me and the customer who is (Now Deceased) therefore, I can present you as the Next of Kin and we will work out the modalities for the claiming of the funds in accordance with the law.
Now, if you are interested and really sure of your trustworthy, Accountability and confidentiality on this transaction without disappointment, you can contact me using my private email address: peterwillms101@hotmail.com
Our sharing ratio will be 50% for me and 40% for you, While 10% will be for the necessary expenses that might occur along the line.
I expect your reply
Sincerely
Mr. Peter Williams.
Another day, another pathetic 419 scam crawling out of the digital sewer. This time it’s our old friend “Mr. Peter Williams”, supposedly Manager of the Audit/Accounting Department at Bank of Africa (U.B.A.), who — surprise, surprise — has miraculously discovered a forgotten $10.5 million sitting in a dead German oil trader’s account. The German, Manfred Hoffman (a name so generic it could have been pulled from a random name generator), conveniently died in the Concorde crash near Paris on 25 July 2000. How touching. Twenty-five years later this heroic bank manager is still the only person on planet Earth who knows about this massive secret fortune. No other colleagues, no family, no auditors, no tax authorities, no compliance department — just poor, lonely Peter and his magical dead client.
Of course he’s willing to turn you, a complete random stranger he’s emailing out of the blue, into the “next of kin” (a legal term he clearly understands perfectly). All you have to do is be “trustworthy, accountable and confidential” — qualities he’s apparently able to judge from a single email reply. In return he generously offers you 40% of the $10.5 million, keeps 50% for himself, and leaves 10% for those pesky “expenses along the line” (you know, the ones that mysteriously multiply until you’ve sent him thousands of real dollars and he has sent you nothing but more sob stories).
The grammar is as broken as the logic, the story is recycled garbage that’s been circulating since the early 2000s, and the email address (peterwillms101@hotmail.com) screams “I set this up at an internet café in 2007 and never bothered to upgrade”. Yet here we are in 2025/2026 and people are still getting suckered by this exact same script.
So let me say it clearly: this is not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is a textbook advance-fee fraud. If you answer, you will be strung along for weeks or months with fake documents, fake lawyers, fake transfer delays, and endless requests for “small upfront fees” — first for taxes, then for insurance, then for “anti-money-laundering clearance”, then for a bribe to free the funds, then for plane tickets so the “bank official” can come meet you, and so on until you’re broke and they ghost you. There is no money. There never was. There is only a criminal sitting somewhere trying to extract your savings.
If you receive this email (or any variation of it), do everyone a favor: do NOT reply, do NOT click any links if they ever appear, do NOT send any money, and if possible forward the entire message to your local police fraud unit so these parasites get a little more heat. The only thing “Mr. Peter Williams” is managing is a long list of desperate, greedy or naive victims. Don’t become the next name on it.
Stay sharp. This kind of trash is as old as the internet itself — and unfortunately just as
persistent.
