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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: "Thea Ret" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <thea_ret@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:35:37 -0700
Subject: Goodday

I hope that you will not expose or betray this trust that I am about to impose on you. I decided to contact
you to help me actualize this business for the mutual benefit of both our families. My name is Mr. Thea Ret
am the Auditing and Accounting manager in a commercial Bank in Cambodia, there is one of our customers
who have made fixed deposit of sum of Ten million five hundred thousand dollars, for 4 years and upon maturity;
I sent the notification to his address, but no response. After few months, we sent a reminder and finally we
discovered from his business partner that he died after a brief illness in his country. We tried everything humanly
possible to locate his relatives or family, but all efforts failed. The deposit is still intact with my bank and the interest
is being paid into the principal sum at the end of each year.
If the fund remains in the account for more months, the fund will be confiscated and transferred into the treasury
of the Government as unclaimed funds. This is why I contacted you for us to work together and transfer this fund
into your account, because a foreign account is needed for this transfer,a bank account anywhere in the world
will be fine for the transfer. All that is required of you is to contact my bank with the information I will send you as
the next of kin or a business associate of the depositor with this system the fund will be paid into a bank account
you will provide to the bank. To be honest with you, this is totally legal and 100% risk free.
But the secret must remain between you and me, I have worked with this bank for many years and I know all the
secrets and I have carefully mapped out my perfect strategies to handle this operation successfully. The depositor is
my close friend before his death that is the main reason why I'm the only one working at the bank here that knows much
about the existence of this fund and the secrets and the depositor. We will also use some part of the funds to help the
orphanage and less privileged children in the world.
Please keep this proposal as a secret between us and delete it immediately in your mail box if you are not interested.
But if you are interested give me an answer immediately.

I await your response.

Mr. Thea Ret

Anti-fraud resources: