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

Fraud email example:

From: Paul Smith <paulsmith_54@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2006 01:41:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Attention: Amarjit Singh,


Attention: Amarjit Singh,

Thank you very much for your interest to reply my email, I appreciate that honour even though it seems you have some doubts if this is real or not maybe you have been cheated by many scam artists over the internet, we always warn out numerous international customers to be carefully with anyone claiming to be a banker, there are many fraud going on in the world today, but I wish to inform you that this one is a genuine transaction, I would want to speak with you on phone to advise you more about this before we proceed, please kindly treat this email as urgent by providing your phone number to reach you and explain more details to you, I shall be waiting for your email.

Regards
Paul Smith
Auditing/Accounting Manager
HSBC Bank London.


---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.

Anti-fraud resources: