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: Mireille Yao <mireilleyao22@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: Mireille Yao <mireilleyao22@yahoo.fr>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 03:35:51 +0900 (JST)
Subject: Greetings in the name of God

Dearest,

Greetings in the name of God. I am Mrs. Murielle Yao and
I'm married to Mr. Hassan Yao for 19 years without a child and my
husband died in 2011 during the political crisis in Cote D’Ivoire. I am
contacting you to let you know my desire to donate the sum of USD $ 1.7
million to charities in your country that I inherited from my late
husband. Due to my illness of cancer which the doctors have confirmed
that i will have only few months to live, so it is my desire to see that
this money is invested to any organization of your
choice and distributed to charity organizations, motherless babies
home, schools and support for men and women
homeless or you can consider the benefit of those less fortunate. I do
not want this fund to be use diabolically. As soon as I receive your
reply confirming your acceptance to this work of God then I
will give all relevant information to authorize the release and
transfer the money to you as my duly appointed representative.

Thank you,
Mrs. Murielle Yao.

Anti-fraud resources: