Advance-fee fraud
A promised windfall that never arrives, released only after you pay an upfront fee.
Advance-fee fraud promises a large payout — an inheritance, a lottery win, a business windfall, a cheap loan — but only after you pay a smaller sum upfront to release it. Once you pay, a fresh obstacle appears with a new fee attached, and the cycle repeats for as long as you keep sending money. The promised reward never arrives because it never existed.
The old '419' letters were an early form; today the same structure hides inside fake job offers, phony prize notifications, romance approaches and bogus loan approvals. The defining giveaway is the demand to pay in order to get paid — a real prize, refund or salary is never gated behind an upfront charge you must cover yourself. Requests for those fees in gift cards, cryptocurrency or a transfer to a stranger make any recovery all but impossible. If a windfall you never pursued asks for money before it can reach you, treat that request as the whole point of the scheme, and stop.