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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: benjamin apeah <bjmaphh@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 09:12:53 +0100
Subject: Business offer

Hello dear friend

My name is Benjamin I work with shanxi securities and vault ltd we keep
valuable items for safe keeping from highly place individual, companies and
organizations, I am the vault manager and secretary of the company.

This might look odd but my intuition has pushed me to contact you believing
that you will work with me to achieve great benefit between us.

As strange as this may sound or look considering the fact that we have not
met before, I want you to keep this very confidential, if you are not
interested kindly delete me but if you do kindly reply me urgently to
seal this proposal with you.

I have worked with this company over the years and I discovered a packaged
containing treasure and valuable worth $8m in cash and 2kg of gold bars
worth over 80,000usd, I discovered the contents of the package through our
new scanner, the package has been laying unclaimed since I started working
here 5years ago and I just found out through the company archive the
address of the depositor and next of kin who are both dead by car accident
, with my position in the company and interest in the package I am the only
one with this information its left for me to use it to my advantage as a
life opportunity or report to company.

Therefore I meekly want to use you as the next of kin and retrieve the
package to you as soon as possible, we will share the contents 50/50 and
the secret will remind between me and you.

I wait your reply to guard you on what to do at this email
vgeargle@yahoo.com

Regards

Benjamin

Anti-fraud resources: