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 about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "james ugo" <jamesugo1@msn.com>
Reply-To: jamesugo678@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 08:51:12 +0000
Subject: Urgent Response Needed

Sir,
I am Mr. James Ugo the Director of finance in the foreign payment department
of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). I am writing to
intimate you with a business which needs a foreign Company's assistance to
execute.
In my department, we have US$18m(Eighteen Million US Dollars Only) over
invoice bill after auditing. This money arose from deliberate over-invoiced
bill which we added during last, Military regime to a foreign Company. Now,
the government in power has directed that all contracts duly completed
during and after the last regime be paid in this first quarter of the
financial fiscal year 2006.

It is this remaining over-value sum as above, that I and other official in
the various Department of the ministry have now decided to transfer into
your account for safety, and subsequently disburse in the percentage as
follows:20% for you, the account owner, 70% for us the partners in Nigeria
and 10% for taxation and any expenses that might be incured during the
course of this transaction.
After the transaction three officials will be coming to your country to take
care of our own fund.
2. Note you are expected to maintain confidentiality of the project that we
have, as we have putting in many years of meticulous services to the
government with maturity, top most secrecy and urgency, please reply
urgently.

Thank you very much for your anticipated co-operation.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. James Ugo.


Anti-fraud resources: