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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: "MR. HALIM G" <halimgadhi1@yahoo.com> (may be fake)
Reply-To: halimgadhi01@yahoo.com.au
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 14:04:07 +0400
Subject: MR. HALIM HERE...

Greetings to you,

With warm heart I offer my friendship, and greetings,and I hope this
mail meets you in good time.
However strange or surprising this contact might seem to you as we
have not met personally or had any dealings in the past, I humbly ask
that you take due consideration of its importance and the immense
benefit it will be to you.

I am a staff of National Bank of Dubai, Ras Al - Khaimah Branch, UAE.
I am writing following an oppurtunity in my office that will be of imense
benefit to both of us.
In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of $18.3million
United States of America Dollars(Eighteen million Three hundred thousand
US Dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers
Late Mr. Morris Thompson an American who unfortunately lost his life
in the plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 which crashed on
January 31 2000, including his wife and only daughter. You shall read
more about the crash on visiting this site.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/ and
http://www.nativefederation.org/history/people/mThompson.html
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his
next of kin or relatves to come over and claim his money because we
cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or
relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines.
Unfortunately I learnt that his supposed next of kin being his only
daughter died along with him in the plane crash leaving nobody with
the knowledge of this fund behind for the claim. It is therefore upon
this discovery that I and two other officials in this department now
decided to make business with you and release the money to you as the
next of kin or beneficiary of the funds for safety keeping and
subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don’t
want this money to go back into Government treasury as unclaimed
bill.
The banking law and guidelines here stipulates that such money
remained after five years the money will be transferred into banking
treasury as unclaimed funds.
We agreed that 35% of this money will be for you as foreign partner,
while the balance will be for me and my colleagues. I will visit your
country for the disbursement according to the percentages indicated
above once this money gets into your account. Please be honest to me
and trust is our watchword in this transaction.
Note this transaction is confidential and risk free. As soon as you
receive this mail you should contact me by return mail.
Please note that all necessary arrangement for the smooth release of
these funds to you has been finalised. We will discuss much in details
when I do receive your response.

Please in your response include your telephone number for easy
communication between us.

Best regards

Mr.Halim Gadhi.


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