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: "I am Mr. Vincent Cheng Hoi Chuen," <cheng@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: cheng.vhc66@live.com
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:37:43 +1100
Subject: Good Day


El programa de detecci=F3n de Spam del sistema "dns1.ciberweb.com.mx", ha
identificado este mensaje como "correo basura". A=F9n as=ED, el
mensaje original no se ha borrado para su chequeo, si lo
era, podr=EDa bloquearlo en su programa de correo (cree un "filtro"
a partir de la etiqueta "X-Spam-Score"). Si tiene alguna duda,
contacte con el administrador para m=E1s detalles.

Contenido: Good Day I am Mr. Vincent Cheng Hoi Chuen, GBS, JP
Chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. Good
Day Our Client, Gen Zaiki Taha Abdel, a businessman and also who was
with the Iraqi forces, made a fixed deposit, of Twenty Four million Five
Hundred Thousand United State Dollars only in my branch, a number of
notices was sent to him, before the war which began in 2003 and also
after the war but, no response came from him. We later found out that
the General along with his wife and only daughter had been killed during
the war in a bomb blast that hit their home. [...]=20

Detalles del an=E1lisis: (11.0 puntos, 5.0 requeridos)

pts regla aplicada descripci=F3n
---- ---------------------- ---------------------------------------
1.0 UNDISC_RECIPS Valid-looking To "undisclosed-recipients"
-1.4 ALL_TRUSTED Passed through trusted hosts only via SMTP
1.5 FORGED_YAHOO_RCVD 'From' yahoo.com does not match 'Received' head=
ers
2.4 MILLION_USD BODY: Talks about millions of dollars
2.9 ADVANCE_FEE_3 Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
3.0 ADVANCE_FEE_4 Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
0.0 ADVANCE_FEE_1 Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)
1.6 ADVANCE_FEE_2 Appears to be advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)



Anti-fraud resources: