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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:

Fraud email example:

From: "skyenet@yahoo.com" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <jl@mail.mn>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:45:20 -0700
Subject: Please reply me asap.[Scanned]

Dear friend, can you really understand when someone is genuinely in need of assistance, instead of having biased that it maybe an attempt to cheat as letters relating to this is usually seen,
even myself when customers take such letters to me saying they were told they won this or that lotto awards and so many undeserved money by unknown people they have not met I usually tell them not to respond to such folks its a scam,
but that's not the case here please, I will be very willing to be open to you and share every idea about my letter to you, all I am pleading with you is to give me a benefit of doubt and assist me in this deal, I learnt due
to this persistent scam activities if a person approached another person for a friendship and business it would be declared an intent to scam or scam itself, but that’s not the case with me for approaching you, I have an issue
here in my bank that requires assistance of a foreigner and a partner, I know if I use a person close to me the deal would leak that's the reason I came to you, I am a managing director in my country’s bank, and the issue I am talking
about is the Chinese ex-leader Mr. Bo Xilai and his wife Mrs. Gu Kailai, Mr. Bo and his wife were jailed for life imprisonment on corruption charges in China few months ago, and the Chinese government is tracing all his assets all over the
world to confiscate them, and they sent us a letter in my bank dated August 16th 2013 to make available all investments and transaction details related to the couple, and we made a research in our bank and found non at present, thus all their
investments worth $86.48 million USD in the banks West African Region has been liquidated to cash sometime in July 2012 and transferred on their request to a bank in United Kingdom and we sent the Chinese government a feedback with these
reports and they acknowledged the receipt and give us a greeting message few weeks later for the thorough check, and few days ago we were having issue with a customer’s foreign account in the bank and my attention was called on the issue and
when I was scrutinizing some domiciliary accounts in my bank and I discovered a surprise thing, a non servicing account belonging to Mr. Bo's wife Gu Kailai in the sum of $38.16 million USD, and the mode I got hold of the account indicated there was a
sinister motive going on in the account for a number of years, incoming transactions criteria’s were too poor and secretive to meet the banking criteria for a legitimate transactions, either through the recently sacked chief account officer or someone in the bank
recently wants to make a transfer in the account for a number of time in a foreign account but was denied due to poor state of the account and the account not matching the criteria for outgoing funds in the maximum security system setup in the bank, so I will like
to make a deal here with you because these couple has been imprisoned in China for a life and nobody would come for this funds as I have already given the Chinese government a feedback stating none of the couple's investments/funds still exist in our bank, I will be
glad if I change the account to pop up in the bank in your name and in a criteria that matched customers in our bank so that we will transfer the entire funds into your account, then me and you who knows what had happened will meet and share it in any point or place we agreed.
 
Thanks for taking time to read my letter addressed to you.
 
Mr. Ben.

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