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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: "Laurent Basque" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <mrlaub1@yahoo.ca>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:18:18 +0100
Subject: Reply

Dear friend.
Greetings,

How are you doing with your entire family, hope great? I know that this letter may come to you as a surprise. My name is Laurent BASQUE, Bill and Exchange manager at the foreign remittance department in our bank.

In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of ($17.3million) and I want our bank to release the fund to you as the relative to our deceased customer Late Mr. Christian Eich (the account owner) an engineer who ran carmaker BMW's museum, his wife and two children and his wife's parents were also among the victims in a plane crash of Alaska airlines flight numberAF4590 which crashed on Monday, 31 July year 2000.

And since we got information about his death, the bank have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as the next of kin or relation to the deceased, as indicated in our banking guidelines but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him in the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim.

It is therefore upon this discovery that I decided to make this business proposal to you and our bank will release the money to you as next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it because I don't want the money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed Bill.

The request of foreigner in this transaction is necessary because our late customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner. I have agreed that 40% of ($17.3million) will be for you as a foreign partner in respect to the provision of foreign information’s for the claim, 10% will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business and 50% would be for me, after which I shall visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages indicated.

Besides you should not entertain any atom of fear, because I am sure of the success as an insider in our bank and as soon as possible you reply towards my proposal letter, I will let you know the next step to follow in order to finalize this
transaction.

I will be waiting to hear from you.
Best Regards
Mr. Laurent BASQUE.
Phone: - +226 77708613.

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