419 scam: READ

joewein.net

joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet

Try our spam filter!
Free trial for 30 days

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:

This email uses a separate reply address that is different from the sender address. Spammers use this to get replies even when the original spam sending accounts have been shut down. Also, sometimes the sender addresses are legitimate looking but fake and only the reply address is actually an email account controlled by the scammers.
The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "executive governor" (the name of a person or institution often appearing in 419 scams)
This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.

Fraud email example:

From:
Reply-To: <myoffice1@sify.com>
Date:
Subject: READ

Attn.

You are wasting your precious time and money in the hands of those crooks, your approved funds is nowhere in abroad or any offshore payment reserve centre, don’t just believe that fallacy, is all fraudulent tactics to lure you into spending your hard earned money without benefit in the end. Please ask yourself this simple question upon the receipt of this mail, why have I not received my funds after all my positive contribution of money and time.

The Executive Governor and some of his colleagues from several other ministries whom were assigned with the duty of releasing your fund, has conspired together to divert your funds to another account and the strategy they employed was by demanding several charges from you, all the demand are illegal just to frustrate you to abandon your fund. Finally, your (International Approved Payment Voucher Outgoing foreign payment disk) is with me. Governments want me to submit all unclaimed disk for their use, I have decided to seek your consent if you still wants to claim your funds or not, before I will submit it by Friday next week.

I will give you further details as soon as you respond.

Regards,

Joseph Boroh.

Anti-fraud resources:

What can you do when you receive 419 spam