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: Astrid <handy.astrid01@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:33:11 +0530 (IST)
Subject: A message
















Dear Friend, how are you doing

I am Mr. Handy Astrid I work as the Foreign Operations Manager with one of the international bank here in Burkina Faso. Although the world is very small place and hard place to meet people because you don't know who to trust or believe, but as I have developed the trust in you after my fasting and praying, i made up my mind to confide this confidential business suggestion to you.

Be rest assure that everything will be handled confidentially because, this is a great opportunity we cannot afford to miss, as it will make our family profit alot.

It has been 7 years ago, that most of the greedy African Politicians used our bank to Launder money overseas through the help of their Political advisers.

Most of the funds which they transferred out of the shores of Africa was gold and oil money that was supposed to have been used to develop the continent.

The Political advisers always inflated the amounts before transfer to foreign accounts so I also used the opportunity to divert part of the funds hence I am aware that there is no official trace of how much was transferred as all the accounts used for such transfers were being closed after transfer.

I acted as the Account Officer to most of the politicians and when i discovered that they were using me to succeed in their greedy act, I also cleaned some of their banking records from the Bank files and no body cares to ask me because the money was too much for them to control.

As o am sending this message to you, I was able to divert Ten Million five Hundred thousand United State Dollars ($10.5M) to an escrow account belonging to no one in the bank.

Now the bank is very anxious to know who is the real beneficiary of the funds because they have made a lot of profits with the funds. It has been more than five years now and most of the politicians are no longer using our bank to transfer funds overseas, majority of them don't have the power again, because their tenure has expired. The $10.5 Million Dollars has been lying in the bank as unclaimed fund.

I will soon retire from the bank and without wasting time i will like the fund to be release into your account.
 
So that i will come to your country for the sharing of the fund, The money will be shared 60% for me and 40% for you .There's no one that is going to ask you any question about the funds because everything is well secured by me.
 
If you are interested in this transaction, do not fail to reply me back, but if you are not interested delete my message from your box ok.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Thanks,

Mr. Handy Astrid


Anti-fraud resources: