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: "Afiyah Ahmad" <ahmadafiyah@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 07:10:41 -0800
Subject: From Afiyah Ahmad

Dear Beloved Friend,

I write to you in good faith and hoping that you will
understand the
importance of my email, my decision to contact you is
because I have
been recently diagnosed with Cancer of the lungs and the
doctor said
that I may not survive this illness. Since Syrian troop
backed by
attacking helicopters clashed with rebels bombings in a
mostly
Christian and Druze town near Damascus, my entire
companies where
destroyed, I have been reflecting over my life in the
past, it is
painful that after over 24 years of peaceful marriage with
my late
husband, we had no child of our own that will inherit our
numerous
wealth.

In the past, I have made reasonable donations to the
victims of
Earthquake in Haiti and recently to the same victims in
Japan and
Thailand. Now that my health is gradually deteriorating me
which the
doctor said that I may not survive this illness and I
cannot continue
to do all these by myself anymore, I strongly desire to
reach out to
the poor and needy people in your base but I would prefer
to continue
this with the assistance of a kind person like you to
build charity
foundation in your base for the remembrance of my family.

I deposited the total sum of $3,500,000.00 in a Bank which
I want the
Bank to transfer this money to your Bank account for this
project, and
%90 of this money will be use to build charity foundation
in your base
while %10 will be yours for your effort, I am hoping that
you will not
betray me when the Bank transfers this money to you back
account and
do reply me very urgently for details.

Yours Sincerely Sister
Afiyah Ahmad
ahmadafiyah@yahoo.com

Anti-fraud resources: