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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.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "John Collins" <johncollins001@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: collinsjohn@zipmail.com.br
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 15:37:03 +0000
Subject: Get back to me urgently

Dear friend,

Am Mr.John Collins, in charge of Bills and Foreign Exchange Remittance
Department of LEAD MERCHANT BANK PLC. I am writing you this letter to ask
for your support and co-operation to carry out this business opportunity in
my department.

We discovered an unclaimed sum of $16.5Million in an account belonging to
one of our a foreign customer(Neuweiler,Adrienne) who was an petroleum/gas
consultant/contactor with the NigeriaNationalPetroleum coporation who
happens to be deceased during a business trip.He died with his wife
(Christine Adrienne) on board the Swissair Flight 111 , which crashed into
the Atlantic off Nova Scotia in september 2nd 1998.The plane crash was in
the news.See links below for more detailinformaion:

http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/WORLD/9809/swissair.victims.list/
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9809/08/swissair.02/
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9809/05/swissair.transcript

s/ Since we got information about his death we have been expecting his next
of kin to come over and claim his money. Unfortunately, neither the family
nor the relation has appeared to claim this money.We cannot release this
money unless somebody applies as the next of kin or relation to the
deceased. Our banking guidelines indicated that if such money remained
unclaimed for a period of eight (7) years, it would be transferred into the
MERCHANT BANK Treasury as unclaimed fund. Another officer and I in the
department now decided to transfer this money into your account as the next
of kin or relation of the deceased for easy collection since nobody is
coming for it and we dont want this money to go back into the bank treasury
as theunclaimed debt.

Infact it is my friend that advised me to urgently arrange to transfer out
this money through another foreign beneficiary outside the country. We have
decided to give you 15% of the total sum. So please, as a matter of urgency
send to me,

1.Your Contact address:
2.Contact Telephone & fax Numbers:
3.Age and occupation:

for effective communication. I will do my best to see that we conclude this
transaction successfully on time.Please if you are interested send me an
immediate mail so that I can explain the details to you to understand
everything about this business write to this
emailaddress:collinsjohn@zipmail.com.br

Waiting for your urgent response.

Best Regards.

Mr.John Collins

E_Mail:address:collinsjohn@zipmail.com.br


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