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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

The so-called "419" scam is a type of fraud dominated by criminals from Nigeria and other countries in Africa. Victims of the scam are promised a large amount of money, such as a lottery prize, inheritance, money sitting in some bank account, etc.

Victims never receive this non-existent fortune but are tricked into sending their money to the criminals, who remain anonymous. They hide their real identity and location by using fake names and fake postal addresses as well as communicating via anonymous free email accounts and mobile phones.

Keep in mind that scammers DO NOT use their real names when defrauding people.
The criminals either abuse names of real people or companies or invent names or addresses.
Any real people or companies mentioned below have NO CONNECTION to the scammers!

Read more about such scams here or in our 419 FAQ. Use the Scam-O-Matic to verify suspect emails.

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Fraud email example:

From: "Raymond George" <raymondgeorg3@msn.com>
Reply-To: rgnwbs@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:06:02 +0000
Subject: Urgent Response Needed

FROM THE DESK OF RAYMOND GEORGE
AUDIT AND ACCOUNT DEPT.
NATIONWIDE BUILDING SOCIETY LONDON.

Dear Friend,

I am Raymond George,a staff of bills and exchange at the foreign remittance
Department of my Bank in London. In my department, we discovered an
abandoned sum of (US$8.5M) Eight Million, Five hundred, thousand United
States Dollars only, in an account that belongs to Donald Compos who died
along with his entire family in 26th December 2003 in a plane crash during
their christmas holiday.

Click bellow to view the plane crash chaotic scene
http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/97/384/11653_Aircrash.html

Since we got information about his death,the bank has been expecting his
next of kin to come over for the claims because we cannot release it unless
somebody applies as a next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated
in our banking guidelines Unfortunately we learnt that he did not mention
any beneficiary to his account before his sudden death. It is therefore upon
this discovery that I decided to contact you, with our support as insiders
in the bank it makes it easier for the money to be released to you as the
next of kin or relation to the deceased since nobody is fronting for the
money and i do not want this funds to go into disbursement account as
unclaimed bill.

The banking law and guidelines here stipulates that if such money remained
unclaimed after four(4) years the money will be transferred into the
government account as unclaimed fund.

We shall negotiate on the percentage split of the funds as we proceed.

Therefore to enable immediate release of the inheritance to you as arranged,
you should contact me immediately for further directives on how to go about
actualizing the claim in your name.

I look forward to your immediate response.

Best Regards,

Mr Raymond George.

N/B: I know that this email will come to you as a surprise, considering the
fact that it is unsolicited. I quite understand your concern over this
matter considering the happenings all over the world, I want to assure you
that this is a 100% legitimate and risk free transaction.


Anti-fraud resources: