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: Barr.Collins Mark. <collinsmk001@yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: colmark003@yahoo.ca
Date: 7 Jun 2007 20:09:19 -0000
Subject: OUR CHANCE

Content-Type: text/html

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit




7th June,2007



Dear Friend,



I am Barrister Collins Mark, an Attorney at Law, personal attorney to a National of your country, who worked with Mobil Oil Plc. in Zimbabwe, hereinafter shall be referred to as my client.



On September 9, 2001, my client and his wife made a business trip to New York and never returned up till now. I, to the best of my knowledge believe that my client and the wife must be among the thousands of victims of the September 11 attack since he has business schedule to the world trade centre that very day of the attack, no doubt about it. Since then, I have made several inquiries to your Embassy here in Harare to locate any of my client’s extended relatives but this proved unsuccessful.



After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the internet to see if any member of his family could be located or traced hence I contacted you for bearing exactly same family name with him. I am contacting you to assist me in repatriating the funds and property left behind by my client before they got confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where he has big deposits. Particularly, the bank where the deceased had an account valued at about (US$4.5m) Four million and Five hundred thousand United States Dollars, has issued me a notice to provide the "Next of Kin" or have the account confiscated within the next 48 working days. Since I have been unsuccessful locating the relatives for over four years now, I seek your consent to present you as the “Next of Kin” to the deceased so that the funds will be paid into your bank account, then we can share it on 50% each side for onward investment in your country.



All necessary legal documents that can be used to back-up the claims will be provided. What I require is your honest co-operation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangements that will protect you and me from any reach of the law.



Please do get back to me as soon as possible through my address, email or fax while my phone number will be furnished to you in my next mail if you will be interested so that I will let you know the steps to be taken to actualise the repatriation/payment of the fund.



Best Regards,



Barr. Collins Mark.

Principal Attorney,

Group Attorneys.

Legal Building,

1-5 Presidential Road,

Harare, Zimbabwe.




Anti-fraud resources: