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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.
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: "JOSEPH IBORI" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <ellalucasny@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 22:40:38 +0800
Subject: PLEASE READ ME AND REPLY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE(THANK YOU)
Greetings,
Please permit me to tell you the reason of sending you this e-mail, I will be very brief and go straight to the point because I would not want to take much of your time.
My name is Joseph Ibori, the eldest son of Mr. James Ibori the ex governor of Delta State of Nigeria who was charged for missapropriation of funds and is presently serving a 13 year sentence in a UK prison. It is because of the seriousness and importance of the situation at hand that gave me the impetus to decide to contact a neutral individual whom I have never met before. Although the whole world may term my parents as stealing public funds but in reality they are not worse than all the government officials there but they were witch-hunted because they did not want to dance to the tune of the subsequent political powers, I will reserve my comments on this however and go straight to the reason for my contacting you.
I hereby confidentially inform you that I have the sum of 15,000.000.00 (Fifteen Million USD) that I want to move into the safe custody of a foriegn partner who will invest it for me and for your participation I will give you 25% of the total sum when you receive the funds. I can get this fund to you through any means of your choice be it through wire transfer or pass it through your international airport through a diplomatic means. Pls. let me know immediately if you can help me receive and secure these funds and please if by any means you are not interested in this offer I implore you to delete this message and never disclose its contents to any third party. (Please note that I hope to use a good part of these funds after you have secured them to try to get the best lawyers to fight for my parents early release from prison)
I will give more details upon your favourable response.
Respectfully
Joseph Ibori
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