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: benjamin christian <ben_chris41@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: <ben_chris001@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:11:18 +0000
Subject: Good day



Good day,Thanks for finding time to read this proposal. After thinking about this transaction and the need to make contact with someone to assist me do it, I found it interesting and decided to contact you for this business transaction. Be so kind to contact me at your earliest convenience for a possible business deal involving money transfer of about 18.5 Million GBP.
I am presently in London working as an investment consultant with the below bank at their offshore department. With your sincere assistant and co-operation, I am determined to work this deal out if we can do business. As at this moment, I am constrained to issue more details about this business until your response is received. If you are not familiar with the above information which I believe is scanty for security purposes, please contact me for further details. This deal is worth taking and highly profitable. Thank you for your time and attention.
Warmest regards, Mr. Ben Chris......................... ..........................................Chief Marketing Executive,Dept.of Offshore Mortgage Services,HBOS Plc London.
_________________________________________________________________
Make every IM count. Download Windows Live Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. It’s free. 
http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGWL_June07

Anti-fraud resources: