joewein.net   joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet
Try our spam filter!
Free trial for 30 days
  jwSpamSpy

Home
About Us
Spam
419/Nigeria
Fraud
Contact

"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: "Dr.James Williams" <jamesw111111111115@att.net>
Reply-To: <dr.james_333williams@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:49:02 -0800
Subject: Good Day,

* 0.4 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 Razor2 gives confidence level above 50%
* [cf: 100]
* 0.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100 Razor2 gives engine 4 confidence level
* above 50%
* [cf: 100]
* 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily
* valid
* 1.7 RAZOR2_CHECK Listed in Razor2 (http://razor.sf.net/)
* 0.2 SARE_HIRISK_FORGED_ATT SARE_HIRISK_FORGED_ATT
* 1.7 SARE_FRAUD_X5 Matches 5+ phrases commonly used in fraud spam
* 0.0 T_HK_NAME_FM_DR T_HK_NAME_FM_DR
* 1.7 SARE_FRAUD_X3 Matches 3+ phrases commonly used in fraud spam
* 1.7 SARE_FRAUD_X4 Matches 4+ phrases commonly used in fraud spam
* 0.0 T_DKIM_INVALID DKIM-Signature header exists but is not valid
* 6.0 FREEMAIL_REPLYTO Reply-To/From or Reply-To/body contain different
* freemails
* 2.4 ADVANCE_FEE_5_NEW Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
* 1.5 ADVANCE_FEE_4_NEW Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
* 0.5 ADVANCE_FEE_3_NEW Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
* 0.0 T_TO_NO_BRKTS_FREEMAIL T_TO_NO_BRKTS_FREEMAIL
* 4.5 FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK Forged mail pretending to be from MS Outlook
* 5.0 CT_INHERIT_3 Indicate Nigerian Scam
X-Spam-Class: SPAM-HIGH-VERY - SpamAssassin rejected - Score=42 (15) X=pascal H=nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com [98.138.90.74] HELO=[nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com] F=[jamesw111111111115@att.net] T=[weisberg@texoma.net] S=[Good Day,] - X=pascal H=nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com [98.138.90.74] HELO=[nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com] F=[jamesw111111111115@att.net] T=[weisberg@texoma.net] S=[Good Day,]
X-Spamsave: Yes - SpamAssassin rejected - Score=42 (15) X=pascal H=nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com [98.138.90.74] HELO=[nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com] F=[jamesw111111111115@att.net] T=[weisberg@texoma.net] S=[Good Day,] - X=pascal H=nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com [98.138.90.74] HELO=[nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com] F=[jamesw111111111115@att.net] T=[weisberg@texoma.net] S=[Good Day,]
X-Sender-Host-Address: 98.138.90.74
X-Sender-Host-Name: nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com
X-Original-helo: nm11.bullet.mail.ne1.yahoo.com

Good Day,

First and foremost I would like to apologize for infringing on your privacy by sending you an unsolicited email,I would have given you a call, but rather I decided to contact you via an email to get us acquainted since it is a safer way of private communication.If you must know, I came about your contact information through a random search with my client's name on the Inter net while trying to locate any link to him.

I am Dr.James Williams a personal account adviser/officer to a great late industrialist who has an account in one of the top banks here in Ghana. It has been nine years now since he died in the year 2000 without a written or an oral will to the best of my knowledge from information I gathered via his attorney here in Ghana and since then nobody has operated on his account again hence the money is floating and if I do not remit this money out urgently it will be forfeited for nothing since the bank has been sold on , 19 January 2011 to another bank and the management of the bank are now ready to release the fund to any foreigner who has the correct information of the account before fully handing over the management to the new bank.

The owner of this account is a foreigner and no other person knows about this account OR anything concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary. My investigation through the National immigration department proved to me as well that he was single as at the point of his entry into Ghana.As a matter of fact, I have decided to transfer this fund abroad for investment.Your assistance as a foreigner is necessary because the management of the bank will welcome any foreigner who has correct information to this account which I will give you immediately, if you are interested to do this business with me.Firstly,before I will disclose the said amount to you, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential,I want to sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of this great magnitude which I solicit your assistance to enable us transfer the said
amount into your safe account for on ward investment.

You can either provide us with an existing account or to set up a new bank account immediately to receive this fund, even an empty bank account will serve to receive this fund,as long as you are willing to remain honest to me till the end of this important business transaction, trusting in you and believing that you will never let me down either now or in future. I am sure that everything will work out as the world bank send their delegate to us which we had a meeting in the bank of Ghana on our independence day 6 of march 2010 and the G20 summit meeting that was heard in London to stop the global financial crisis have brought a new banking system to Africa, in a way that no body will know and i will get you all the legal document in your name, more to it i was able to speak with the representative from the world bank at length so i strongly believe that everything will work out.

As soon as I hear from you, and upon your strong assurance that you will not let me down once the fund goes into your account I will then start to process the transfer of the fund to your account without further delay.

If interested contact me for further details.

Yours Faithfully,
Dr.James Williams.

Anti-fraud resources: