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"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.

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Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "Peter Ofori" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <peterofori5@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 04:12:51 -0000
Subject: A project Deal

Dear Friend,

My name is Mr Peter Ofori a Ghanaian citicen, an account management clerk in of the prime bank here. I wish to know if we can work together. I would like you to stand as the next of kin to my deceased client who made some deposits of $36,150,000,00 (thirty six million hundred and fifty thousand usd) to my bank. He died without any registered next of kin and as such the funds now have an open beneficiary mandate.

lnfact, l could have done this alone but because we civil servants are not legally allowed to operate foreign account. And it would eventually raise eye brows on my side during the time of transfer, because l am a staff of the bank. These are the actual reasons l contact you as foreign partner who will forward claims by my directives as the bona fide next-of-kin with Ghana's court affidavit of claim to the bank and also present a foreign bank account where the money will be re-transfered into, and we shall start the first transfer with $11million usd and open successful transaction without any disappointment from your side, then we shall re-apply for the transfer of the remaining balance to your account.

And you will be entitled to 30% of the total sum as your share after everything, 10% of the total sum will be used to reimburse back expences like telephone bills and other logistics expences each person made during the transaction, while 60% will be for me and my asistant in the office who knew about this money.

If you are interested please do let me know so that I can give you comprehensive details on what we are to do pull it out. I hope to get your response as soon as possible,
Best Regards
Peter Ofori

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