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.

 

 

Fraud email example:

From: "young ben" <youngben4@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: youngben03@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 10:54:45 +0100
Subject: private

AUDIT AND ACCOUNTS UNIT
ECO BANK OF TOGOLEISE
ECO BANK HOUSE,LOME- TOGO.
DR YOUNG BEN.
E-MAIL youngben03@yahoo.com

Attention: Sir/Madam,

I am Dr young ben a staff of bills and exchange at the foreign remittance
Department, of Eco Bank Of Togolise plc.

I am writing following the impressive information about you from our
chambers of commerce and industry.

In my department, we discovered an abandoned the sum of $12.5M (TWELVE
MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS only), in an account
that belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire
family in November 2002 in a plane crash.

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of
kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless
somebody applies as a next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated
in our banking guidelines.

Unfortunately we learn that his supposed next of kin or relations died along
with him at the crash leaving nobody behind! for the claim.

It is therefore upon this discovery that I and other officials in the
department now decided to make business with you, that is, to release the
money to you as the next of kin or relation to the decease since nobody is
fronting for the money and we do not want this fund to go into disbursement
account as unclaimed bill.

The banking law and guidelines here stipulates that if such money remained
unclaimed after six years the money will be transferred into federal
government account as unclaimed fund.

The request of a foreigner as next of kin in this business is occassioned by
the fact that the customer was a foreigner and an indigene can not stand as
a next of kin to a foreigner.

We agreed that 30% of this money will be for you as the foreign partner and
10% for expenses incurred during the cost of remittance.

Therefore to enable immediate transfer of the fund to you as arranged,you
should contact me with my private e-mail adress (youngben03@yahoo.com)
immediately for further briefing:

I look forward to hearing from you soon.Include your phone
and fax numbers when repling

Dr Young Ben
Best regards.
Foreign Remittance


Anti-fraud resources: