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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: =?iso-8859-1?q?JOHN=20MIKE?= <mr_johnmike1@yahoo.fr>
Reply-To: mrjohn_mike@myway.com
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:50:11 +0000 (GMT)
Subject:


J'ai une nouvelle adresse mailVous pouvez maintenant m'écrire à : mr_johnmike1@yahoo.fr

FROM:The Desk of John Mike,

Bill And Exchange Manager,(A.D.B)

(African Development Bank),

Republic of Benin.

Phone: 00229 9586-7952



STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL AND PRIVATE




Dear Friend ,




Compliments of the day. I deceided to contact you after I received a worthy information about your reliability and honesty. Hence I confide in you.

I am Mr John Mike,from (African Development Bank),Republic of Benin. During the course of our auditing we discovered the sum of twelve million five hundred thousand united states dollars (USD$12.500.000.00) floating in an account opened in this Bank since 1997 and as from 2001 nobody has operated on this account again, and after going through some old files in the records I discovered that the owner of the account died without a [HEIR]sept11th 2001 by plane crash, hence the money is floating.

After due verification I noticed that no other person knows about this account except his wife who was also invovled in the crash, and the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that until his death he was the Director GOLD ARK [SARL] Since our bank,(African Development Bank)Benin Rep.got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come forward 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 and policies but up to date nobody came up to this bank as his next of kin or relative. It is therefore upon this discovery that I and other officials in my department now decided to make this businness proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or elation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming forth and we don?twant this money to go into the Bank treasury as unclaimed Bill.

On this note, I decided to seek for whom his name shall be used as the next of kin as no one has come up as his relation. And the country law here does not allow such money to stay more than Five years, for the money will be recalled to the government treasury as unclaimed after this period.Upon the receipt of your response, I will send to you the application form,bank?s contact and the next step to take. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this business is hitch free and that you should not entertain any fear as all modalities for fund transfer can be finalized within fourteen banking days, after you apply to the bank as a relation to the deceased.

It has been resolved that 20% will be for you while 10% has been maped out to defray any expences that might be incured during the process of the ransaction.

Then 70% will be for me which shall be release after the funds must have been remitted into your bank account.When you receive this letter, kindly send me an e-mail signifying your decision.Including your private Tel/Fax numbers for quick communication. I will be very happy if you can treat this business with the utmost secrecy it demands because of my position in this bank. For confidentiality reasons,kindly reply to my private Email: mrjohn_mike@myway.com

Hoping for a very successful business relationship with you.



Best Regards,

Mr John Mike

Phone: +229 9586-7952 (direct Line)

Email: mrjohn_mike@myway.com

- JOHN MIKE


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