419 Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam (2006-01)

joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet

Try our spam filter!
Free trial for 30 days

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:

This email uses a separate reply address that is different from the sender address. Spammers use this to get replies even when the original spam sending accounts have been shut down. Also, sometimes the sender addresses are legitimate looking but fake and only the reply address is actually an email account controlled by the scammers.
This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.

Fraud email example:

From: Faith Ben <faith_ben@ymail.com>
Reply-To: Faith Ben <dhl.office101@yahoo.com.hk>
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 15:06:45 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Dear.Beneficiary, This is to bring to your notice that because of
the impossibility of your fund transfer through the Money Gram network, we
have credited your total of $1.5millon valid fund into an ATM MASTER CARD
and I have paid the re-activation fee and the delivery of the ATM Card To
you, I paid it because the ATM Card worth of $1,500,000.00 which I have
registered it delivery yesterday has less than 21 days to expire in the
custody of the DHL Company and when it expires, the money will go into

Anti-fraud resources:

What can you do when you receive 419 spam