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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: Senior Associate <forum@objngn.tk>
Reply-To: Senior.Associate@consultant.com
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2015 03:55:49 -0500
Subject: I HAVE OFFICIALLY RE-VISITED YOUR ISSUE.



--
Ref: Information About Your Family Tree – Final Notice!


Attn:

This is our second but final attempt to reach you in view of this
subject matter.

When someone dies without leaving a will and there’s no known relative
to inherit, the government receives the money. Unless, a previously
unknown distant relative; a descendant from the same ancestor is found
within a limited time frame at the discretion of the treasury department
to claim the inheritance as laid out in section 46 of the Administration
of Estates Act of 1925

As stated in our previous letter, we are legally empowered to track and
reunite unclaimed funds with distant relatives of people who have died
without making a will or known next of kin and after an extensive
genealogical research effort, we have traced a dormant termed deposit
bank account with your family name and the account has a substantial
amount of money on it now tagged “unclaimed funds” which you are legally
entitled to. The bank is compelled by the laws to hand over the funds
(as unclaimed funds) to the government if no claim is made immediately.
Apparently, the funds belongs to one of your family members who
reportedly died intestate some years ago leaving behind a substantial
amount of money in the bank account unattended.

The money is yours (or your family’s), not the bank’s nor the
Government’s. It’s legally yours on positive proof of your identity
being a distant relative of the deceased on forth degree (“statutory
legacies”), a descendant from the same ancestor before the bank is
compelled by law to hand the money to the government.

Important Note: we have been retained by the bank to administer the
estate and reunite you with the dormant account because you have been
identified and located as the only suitable heir apparent to the estate
with the same last name and our initial consultation is free, yes, it’s
free but we will charge a contingency fee of 5% of any sum recovered
from the bank. Which means you will not pay us a cent unless we recover
money for you and you owe it to yourself and your family at least to
explore this rare life changing opportunity.

It might interest you to know that every year thousands of people
(especially foreigners) die without leaving a will or known next of kin
thereby forfeiting so much money to the government as unclaimed estate.
There is a time limit at the discretion of the Treasury Department when
claiming such inheritance hence the need to act swiftly to reconcile
this account.

In a recent news report, “there is currently more than $30 billion in
unclaimed money and with the total of unclaimed money rising faster than
people claiming, it is projected that in the year 2020 there could be as
much as $40 billion of unclaimed money. Aging population is adding more
significantly to this number”. This is what prompted us to locate you
and legally empower you to claim the estate before it becomes too late.

In compliance with standard requirements of the federal disclosure and
privacy laws which prohibit us from revealing certain privileged
information without due process, we intentionally left out certain
information which we deemed proprietary at this point and to enable us
double-check our record and ensure that you are indeed the addressee of
this letter, we need you to reconfirm your information by providing us
with your full names (no initial please); your date of birth; your
current occupation; contact address and your telephone/fax numbers. Once
we reconfirm your information and endorse same appropriately, we shall
provide you with all the privileged information/legal documents relating
to the deceased customer and his term-deposit account and also will give
you guidelines on how we intend to realise this goal without the breach
of the law.

We would respectfully request that you treat the content of this letter
as privileged and respect the integrity of the information you come by
as a result of this correspondence.


Thank you

Waiting for your reply.
Yours Sincerely
Tinashe Makoni
Senior Associate

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