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joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet
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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:
- This email uses a separate reply address that is different from the sender address. Spammers use this to get replies even when the original spam sending accounts have been shut down. Also, sometimes the sender addresses are legitimate looking but fake and only the reply address is actually an email account controlled by the scammers.
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "dear beneficiary," (this SPAM email was probably sent to thousands of people)
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: "HARRISON" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <davidharrisons@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 10:15:43 -0800
Subject: Dear Beneficiary, ARE YOU DIED OR ALIVE
Dear Beneficiary,
This is Mr David Harrison. I am contacting you once more for you to be notify that you have not provided your datas to us and again some one contacted us today saying that you instructed him to pay balance fee which is $450 that is holding your fund not to be release to your account and right now i have been very worried as we still never heard from you till now before we make release your fund to him and as i telling you right now this man is having the $450 to pay on your behalf and claim your fund the total sum of $3.6Million USD so right now this is the final contact i am giving to you since you have not replied to our email for some time now and we decided to keep selience till now so please we need to know if you are the one that sent this man also we need to know do you still need this fund to be transfered into your account yes /no so that we can tell this man to stop contacting us and not to collect the $450 and release the fund to him,
Finaly as it is now the nigeria government have keep this fund too long and if this fund remains here by next year it will be send back to treasure room as unclaimed fund and then you will lose all the money that you have been spending in some offices so my dear i am advising you if you know you have this fee and ready to make the payment kindly let me know and you can as well feel free to ask me any question you feel like .Again remember that you will have only 7 days to claim your fund.
I hope you understand with me and for your information you have only 24hours to do this because soon all banks will soon be having their yearly reconciliation which can take you time to claim your fund also much money but right now you are only paying these fee and have your fund released without any further expenses.
Best Regards
David Harrison
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Anti-fraud resources:
