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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.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "GARRY" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <horst.horst97@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:01:29 +0100
Subject: Re: True Facts Behind Your Contract Claims...

Re: True Facts Behind Your Contract Claims...

This letter may come to you as a surprise. However you are not compelled to believe me but this is just the truth about your contract claims in Nigeria.My name is MR HORST HORST ,one of the External auditors engaged by the Federal Government of Nigeria and World Bank to reconcile the debt profile of Nigeria. I am from Ghana. I have been working for this sub-region for the past 15 years. This is a very long message but I pray that you will have the patience to read and study it.My intention is to prevent you from further expliotation.

In reality however, in the official records in the Federal Ministry of Finance ,this contract value and number is in your favor as the beneficiary.The problem you have is not so much that this contract is an over invoiced contract deal in which some Nigerian Government officials in the past who initiated you into this deal presented you as the beneficiary and based on this they raised official documents to facilitate this fund be transferred into your account but due to bureaucratic bottlenecks and stultifying official protocols, delays as well as interplay of unforeseen and contingencies caused by instability in government policies and change of government complicated every effort and the fund could not be transferred as at the time it was supposed to. As a result, this contract became trapped in the Fraud detective Unit of Central Bank of Nigeria.

All the files and documents were confiscated by this Fraud Unit. When this happened, impostors and fraud syndicates through their agents who have access to this information capitalized on this opportunity to take advantage of you by impersonating real, rightful and honest officials and government institutions, Ministries, Agencies to defraud and extort monies under false pretences from you.For example, these impostors and their syndicates pose as if they were Central Bank Governor of Nigeria, Deputy Governor of CBN, Director of Int'l Remittance Department, some pose as Minister of Finance, as Accountant-General of the Federation. Worse still, some pose as the Executive President of Nigeria, as Vice President of Nigeria, as Senate President, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, as Secretary to Nigerian Government as heads and chief executives of Federal Government of Nigerian parastatals, institutions and agencies and some pose as World Bank and IMF officials in Nigeria. Not only these, they also pose

All these notwithstanding, they go ahead to pose as Citi Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank, HSBC London, Liberty Banks, Bank of Int'l Settlement, African Development Bank and other prime banks in the world. Some pose as insurance companies like NICON PLC and Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC). All these impersonations have one aim: to extort money from you and based on these false representations they extort money from you as bank charges and taxes which ended in the pockets of these impostors.
Their trick is that once payment has been advanced, they toss you around, create another problem and convince you to pay and this continues on and on as long as you are willing and capable to corporate financially.
Do you know that 75% of all the different letters/approvals but normally from the same officials /offices you receive everyday in connection with this transaction either by mail or fax or phone and currier service are fake from these impostors.

Such letters as: From THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, PRESIDENCY, OFFICE OF THE ECONOMIC ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT, SCRETARY TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL DUTIES TO THE PRESIDENT, OFFICE OF THE SENATE PRESIDENT, OFFICE OF THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY SENATE PRESIDENT AND SPEAKER TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR OF CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA, OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR CBN, DIRECTOR, INT'L REMMITTANCE DEPARTMENT CBN, MINISTRY OF FINANCE, MINISTRY OF JUSTICE., OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE FEDERATION, ANTI FRAUD COMMITTTE/NIGERIAN POLICE ( NPF) , AND MANY LETTERS/APPROVAL FROM VARIOUS COMMERCIAL BANKS IN NIGERIA AND FROM THE WORLD BANK CHAIRMAN, the lists are endless and all these have a common agenda: to extort money.

One of the greatest problems we discovered is that you and other contractors who are claiming their entitlements in Nigeria are facing is the difficulty of identifying, knowing and differentiating the impostors from the genuine, legitimate, rightful and honest officials. I want to make it clear to you that there are lots of impostors and fraud syndicates who capitalized on their access and knowledge of unclaimed contract information to cheat and defraud unsuspecting and innocent foreign and even their local contractors.

However I am not writing to take advantage of you but I stand here to tell you the truth. I can with the corporation of some of my colleagues help you get this contract fund transferred to your account. This transaction honestly does not require all these official protocols and documentations.It is these impostors that forge all these papers made it look as if it is much of official They did all these to extort money from you. The only way out is first is to arrange and remove the contract file from the fraud Unit,Legitimize it and negotiate with the key stakeholders concerned One thing we noticed is that most of our foreign brothers prefer short cut instead of the crucibles. We wonder how you people believe that a whole President of a country or his Vice or Senate President or Minister of Finance or Central Bank Governor will come down so low to call a contractor on phone, to talk about his contract payment or even going to the length of giving you his hotline number. This is ridiculous! Can the PRESIDENT o

This is the truth! Should you still be interested in receiving this payment,having worked for it, I will assist you realize your dream being in a position to do that because I am on the ground and with my position can easily rap up this transaction for you if I hear from you.

Yours Faithfully,
Mr.Horst Horst.

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