A new variation of the 419 scam is targeting small non-profit organisations.

Spam messages have been sent to various organisations using the name 'Barbara Moratek', the supposed director of grant programmes for a group called the 'Ivete Foundation'.

The email asks for more information on donors and volunteers, presumably for the purpose of running financial scams, and asks for money as an 'advance' or 'processing' fee.

Security firm Sunbelt Software documented the scam in a company blog. Within hours of making the post, comments poured in from non-profit groups which had received the same message.

"I was disgusted to see all the comments from non-profits that had been targeted by this scam," wrote Sunbelt chief executive Alex Eckelberry. "How sick to target people who are working with no money to help others in need."

The website for the 'Ivete Foundation' is a single 'coming soon' page, while a Google search for 'Barbara Moratek' yields a collection of fake codec malware sites. Sunbelt believes this is an attempt to further monetise the scam.

"It is likely that malware sites are taking advantage of the fact that people will be searching this name to find out more about it," wrote Eckelberry.