Beware of emails that promise you a million dollars as the prize of a lottery. They might actually leave you poorer by a few thousands, or even lakhs, of rupees.

A victim of one such mail ? sent by a racket active worldwide and named Nigeria Scam 419, after the relevant section of the criminal code of that country ? was Rajat Bhattacharjee (name changed), of Salt Lake?s BB Block.

An engineer by profession, he was pleasantly surprised on receiving a mail that offered him $500,000 as the prize of a lottery run by the Japan Email Lotto Promotion International. The next day, he received another mail seeking his bank account number for transferring the amount. This time, the company even issued an e-certificate that had the details of the prize and the address of the company.

He soon replied, mentioning his account number, and received a third mail that said that since he was a ?non-resident Chinese?, he had to pay a tax of $950 to the government of China before the company could transfer the amount.

Dreaming of the dollars that would change his life for good, Bhattacharjee paid up Rs 42,750. Over the next few days, the company sent him a series of mails from different addresses, including that of a London-based bank, seeking money for reasons ranging from registration charge to processing fee.

Bhattacharjee followed the instructions and ended up paying close to a lakh before realising that he had been taken in by an elaborate trick. He finally approached the CID.

Probing the complaint, sleuths stumbled upon a few other similar incidents.

?This appears to be a typical case of Nigeria Scam 419,? said Rajeev Kumar, CID deputy inspector general (operations). ?It?s unfortunate that educated youths are falling into the trap.?

Officers probing the scam that has hit almost all countries said most of the ?419 letters and emails? originate from or can be traced back to Nigeria. Some of them also originate from Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.

Police have not ruled out the involvement of Indians, either. ?It could be that some groups in the country had replicated the model,? Kumar said.