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: "Facebook" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <facebookwinnersdepartment15@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 14:05:25 -0500
Subject: Happy New Year!!!

Facebook Online New Year International Lottery
From: The Desk Of the President.
International Promotions / Prize Award.
Category: 2nd
 
Dear lucky winner. We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws by Facebook group in cash new year promotion to encourage the usage of Facebook worldwide. Your name was among the 20 lucky winners who won $250,000.00USD (Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) each on the Facebook group promotion award attached to Lucky Number (FB-225-36), Ticket Number (FB-172-60), Batch Number (FB-02/544) and Serial Number (06-2014).
 
The online draws was conducted by a random selection of emails you were picked by an advanced automated random computer search from Facebook in other to claim your $250,000.00USD the lottery program which is a new innovation by Facebook, is aimed at saying a big thank you to all our users for making Facebook their number one means to connect, communicate, relate and hook up with their families and friends over the years.
 
You are required to contact the head of our disbursement department in the person of Mr. David Alfredo via this email address (facebookwinnersdepartment15@gmail.com) with information below for the complete processing of your Winning certificate and further information regarding the disbursement of your lottery winnings.
 
Full Name:
Residential Address (Not P.O Box Address):
Phone Number(s):
Occupation:
Marital Status:
Sex:
Age:
Country of Residence:
Nationality:
Lucky Number: FB-225-36
Ticket Number: FB-172-60
Batch Number: FB-02/544
Serial Number: 06-2014
Your Email Address:
 
Furthermore, if there is any change in email addresses please contact us on time. Do not reply to this email, Contact the disbursement department with the email address provided above.
 
NOTE: When this lottery started, scammers decided to run their own scam same way the Facebook contacts their winners so we decided to publish their scams all over their internet and on search engines like, Google, Bing and Yahoo search and more. You will find lots of Facebook scams we posted there just to protect winners like you from scam. Even when the scammers went as far as hacking into the database of the Facebook just to steal info's of winners to use it for their scams we decided to stop advertisements of this lottery on the site for the main time while the lottery runs with private policies so you may be rest assured that this is real and legal moreover there are still some scam artists around but thanks to the FBI, 86 of them have been arrested and they are still on the trail for more, also if you notice the sender's address for this email is (info@fbi.gov) we used the FBI domain so this email won't be able to be hacked or tampered with by scammers all this for your safety.< /DIV>
 
We wish you a Happy New Year, Thanks and more Congratulations!
 
Regards,
Sheryl Kara Sandberg
COO Facebook

Anti-fraud resources: