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: "Peters M. Andrews" <petermarkandrewscdvuqlu@aim.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:31:21 +0200
Subject: Urgent Business proposals

>From Mr. Peters Mark Andrews,

How are you today and your family? I hope all is good, kindly pay attention
and
understand my aim of communicating you today through this letter, my name
is Mr.
Mark Andrews, Regional Managing Director NatWest Bank, East Anglia and
Northern
Home Counties London. I have decided to seek a confidential co-operation
with
you in the execution of the deal described here-under for our both mutual
benefit and hope you will keep it a top secret because of the nature of the

transaction, During the course of our bank year auditing, I discovered an
unclaimed/abandoned fund, sum total of US$12,500,000.00 (Twelve Million
Five
Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only) in an account that belongs to
one
of our foreign customers (Late Mr. Thompson Morrison) an American who
unfortunately lost his life and family, in the plane crash of Alaska
Airlines
Flight 261 which crashed on January 31st, 2000.

Now our bank has been waiting for any of the relatives to come-up for the
claim
but nobody has done that. I personally have been unsuccessful in locating
any of
the relatives for 4 years now, I sincerely seek your consent to present you
as
the next of kin / Will Beneficiary to the deceased so that the proceeds of
this
account valued at {US$12,500,000.00} can be paid to you, which we will
share in
these percentages ratio, 60% to me and 40% to you.

All that I require from you is your sincere co-operation; trust and utmost
confidentiality to enable us conduct this transaction successfully. I
assured
you that this transaction will be executed under a legitimate arrangement
that
will protect you from any breach of the law both in your country and here
in
London once the fund is transferred to your bank account. Upon your
consideration and acceptance of this offer, please proceed immediately and
send
to me the following information.

-Your Full Name,
-Your Contact Address &
-Your direct Mobile telephone Number.

This information will enable me to upload your data into our bank database
to
reflect in the bank network system that you are the named next of kin/will
beneficiary of this fund and I will guide you on how to open communication
with
the bank and make the claims for onward transfer of the fund to you, please
note
that we have few days to carry out this deal, Your kind rapid response
through my personal email: petermarkandrews@aim.com will be highly
appreciated.

Thanking you in anticipation for your response.

Regards,
Mr. Mark Andrews
Regional Managing Director,
NatWest Bank Plc London.


Anti-fraud resources: