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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: "DR. RAYMOND KONWE" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <raymondkonwe@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 03:32:41 +0300
Subject: KINDLY DO RESPOND A.S.A.P

Dear Friend,

I am Mr. Raymond Konwe I work as the Foreign Operations Manager with one of the international bank here in Republic of Benin. Even though the world is a small place and difficult to meet people one can trust, but after my fasting and praying, I made up my mind to confide this confidential business matter with you.
For many years, many greedy African politicians used our bank to launder money overseas through the help of their foreign partners. This is because our country is very small and crime rate is at it minimal so there is little or no awareness, therefore a perfect cover for such activity to thrive.

Most of the funds which they transferred out of the shores of Africa were proceeds from gold and oil sold, which was supposed to be used in developing their various countries and the continent at large.

These foreign partners have a way of splitting the funds into many places to deferent accounts; moreover transactions like this can come as many as ten or fifteen totaling up to US$700Million for one person and after splitting it, it can take our bank days to complete the wire transfers to the various banks of their designation. It was in one of such transactions that I diverted the sum of US$10.5Million and ensured that there is no trace because all such account are closed after transfer. The bank files linking such transaction to these politicians are cleaned out also.
As I said before, I was able to divert Ten Million five Hundred thousand United State Dollars ($10.5M) to an escrow account that belonging to no body in the bank. This fund has been there for the past five years and right now the management is very anxious to know who the real beneficiary of the funds is because they have made a lot of profits on the funds.
I am due for retirement from the bank (I have just two months to go); what I want is to fix your name as the owner of the fund and then provide you with all the information known (only) to the account holder and then you can apply for the fund to be wire transferred to your account in your country after which I will come to meet with you for the sharing of the fund. The money will be shared 60% for me and 40% for you. No question will be asked you about the funds because everything is well secured by me.
If you are interested in this transaction, do not hesitate to reply back to me, but if not, please delete my message from your box.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Thanks,

Mr. Raymond Konwe

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