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: James Williams <jw915968@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <j_williams991@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 04:36:54 -0700
Subject: Please reply

I am Mr. James Williams the Director of finance in the foreign payment
department of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). I am
writing to intimate you with a business which needs a foreign Company's
assistance to execute. In my department, we have US$34m (Thirty four
Million US Dollars Only)over invoice bill after auditing.

This money arose from deliberate over-invoiced bill which we added
during last,late President regime to a foreign Company. Now, the
government in power has directed that all contracts duly completed
during and after the last regime be paid in this first quarter of the
financial fiscal year 2016. It is this remaining over-value sum as
above, that I and other official in the various Department of the
ministry have now decided to transfer into your account for safety, and
subsequently disburse in the percentage as follows:40% for you, the
account owner, 50% for us the partners in Nigeria and 10% for taxation
and any expenses that might be incurred during the course of this
transaction.

After the transaction two officials will be coming to your country to
take care of our own fund. 2. Note you are expected to maintain
confidentiality of the project that we have, as we have putting in many
years of meticulous services to the government with maturity, top most
secrecy and urgency, please reply urgently through this email for intact
receiving.


Thank you very much for your anticipated co-operation.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. J. Williams.

Anti-fraud resources: