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: "Richard Wainwright" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <r.wainw123@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 05:25:58 +0100
Subject: Re: Information

I am a private consultant for very eminent persons in the Asian and Middle East region. They have appointed me to source on their behalf a foreigner with whom they can jointly entrust a reasonable amount of money, which will be channeled into a highly lucrative business venture.

They have a large sum of money transferred to Europe. They request strict confidentiality due to their public nature, they prefer to be anonymous hence I have been given the mandate to source for someone of high business experience with very good reputation.

Note importantly that I have been contacted by two different people in the past month who made me believe that they were serious about doing business but proved otherwise. I do not appreciate my time being wasted in matters such as this.

If truly you are interested in proceeding, kindly send a response with the following information:

Name:
Address:
Occupation:
Tel/fax numbers:
Age:

Yours sincerely
R. Wainwright.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This message is confidential and may contain legally privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this message in error and that reading it, copying it, or in any way disclosing its content to any other person, is strictly unauthorized. If you have received this message in error, please inform the sender by reply e-mail and then immediately delete this e-mail (including any attachments).

Anti-fraud resources: