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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: "Mr. David" <pin1990@bresciaonline.it>
Reply-To: tc7tc@live.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:13:15 +0100 (BST)
Subject: urgent business investment


Dear friend,

I hope that you will not expose or betray this trust and confident that I am about to repose on you for the mutual benefit of our both families. My name is Mr. David Israel, a customer in our bank that made fix deposit for 7 fiscal years upon maturity; I sent notification to his address but got no reply. We finally we discovered that he died after brief illness in his country. I tried everything humanly possible to locate his relatives but all efforts failed. The deposit is still intact with my bank and the interest is being pay into the deposit annually, but if it stays longer it will be confiscated into the government treasury as unclaimed fund. That is why I have seek for your urgent and sincere help to get this fund transferred into your bank account, all that is required of you is to contact my bank with the information’s I will send you as the next of kin or business associate of the depositor and the fund will be paid into any bank account.

To be honest with you, this transaction I have open up to you is totally genuine and 100% risk-free, but the secret must remain between me and you, I have been working with this bank for many years and I know their secret and systems of operation. I have mapped out my perfect strategies to carry out this transaction successfully. The depositor was my very close friend and I was his personal account manager with our bank before his death that is why I know much about the fund and the depositor. We shall also use part of the fund to help the orphanage, people in the street and the less privilege children in the world. Please keep this proposal as a top secret between both of us, and delete it immediately in your email box, if you are not interested. But if you are interested get back to immediately.

I wait for your response.

Mr David Israel.

Anti-fraud resources: