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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.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

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

Fraud email example:

From: British Finance Monitoring Unit <p----marriot44@att.net>
Reply-To: pmarriot14@yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:00:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: From the Desk OF Peter Marriot



>From the Desk OF Peter Marriot,

Managing Director,

British Finance Monitoring Unit.





It has come to our notice that the sum of (US$6.5M) has been credited in your name for transfer and is currently floating in the international banking community.



Under the stipulated Law of the Government of Great Britain and Wales and other member countries of the United Nations, any huge amount of money that has been found in the international computer data system waiting to be transferred without claims for a period of 6 months or less, shall be confiscated and forfeited to the United Nations account.



In line with the on-going financial auditing been conducted in all the financial institutions here in United Kingdom by the British financial monitoring commission through our fund investigation department, I write to officially inform you that during the auditing process our fund investigation officers discovered unpaid fund in the suspense account of one of the bank's in your favor. Therefore the commission wishes to know if you are aware of any fund in your favor in the custody of any financial institution here in UK.



Reason for all the questions is because management of the financial institution where the fund was discovered informed our fund investigation officers that the fund in question has been in their custody for some time, but they have not received any communication from you.



We do hereby ask you to contact this office immediately for ratification within the 3 days of this notice by forwarding to us all your current information including your direct telephone number and postal address where your original payment release documents will be send to you in order for us to confirm your personal receipt of this fund or consider your fund confiscated.







Regards,



Peter Marriot

Anti-fraud resources: