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: "Walter Smith" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <waltersmith4430@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:12:49 -0800
Subject: Re: Code Number 811

Prime Minister's office
10 Downing Street,
London, SW1A 2AA
Foreign Reserve Department,
London UK.

Re: Code Number 811

This is to inform you that we have been monitoring your payment for a very long time and as at today, we discovered that you were mislead by some officers who took advantage of you as a result of demanding one payment after another from you instead of releasing your fund to you. However, at the moment , we have recalled back your payment file to this office since last week and it is now on my desk as I am writing this message to you. You are warned to stop further communication with anybody in respect of your payment with effect from today if you wish to receive your fund successfully without further delay. Your payment file is right here with us and we have are set to complete your payment immediately as instructed by Prime Minister David Cameron and ministry of internal affair, who has approved the sum of $500,000.000.00 (Five Hundred Million United States Dollar Only), to be shared among the affected scam victims around the globe.

Note: that we have been mandated to issue out $1,500,000.00 (One Million Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars Only) as a part payment to you for this fiscal year 2012 that will be paid through Citibank, London UK . if you will like to receive your fund this week let us know immediately by contacting me upon the receipt of this notification and also reconfirm the following information Names, Address, Sex, Age, Occupation and your Phone Number. While we advise you to stop further communication with anybody with effect from today no matter what the person might claim to be so that you don't lost your hard earned money to impostors again.

We hereby issue you our code of conduct, which is (811) so you have to indicate this code when contacting us by using it as your subject because of impostors.

Yours sincerely,
Walter Smith
Foreign Debt Settlement Committee, UK

Anti-fraud resources: