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: "National Westminister Bank Plc" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <nationalwestministerbankplc@consultant.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2016 09:13:57 +0800
Subject: FUNDS RELEASE ORDER!

National Westminister Bank Plc
International Operation
Foreign Remittance Dept.
Connaught House
65 Aldwych WC2B 4DS.
 
To Your Attention;
 
On behalf of the board and management of National Westminister Bank Plc . London UK, I Christine Lagarde, the Director Foreign Exchange wishes to inform you that your outstanding payment of us$18.6million placed on hold by BANK OF ENGLAND has been approved for Immediate collection after a long time investigations.
 
This payment was stopped because several applications have been forwarded with different account information’s with several affidavits of claim requesting for this transfer. I am sure you are not aware of this and the reason why this payment has not been released up, even after you have spent so much time and money.
 
Investigations carried out by my office shows that these applications are not the real owners of this payments and their intentions is to divert this payment to a wrong beneficiary. Are you aware of this? Your email address is boldly written on your file; hence i am using it to contact you.
 
Be informed that we have concluded all arrangements to transfer your fund to your bank account, It is important that i inform you that during the cause of our investigation, we discovered that you were among the beneficiaries of contract payments who went into wrong hands to get their payments and were eventually duped, deceived and they became frustrated, hence you are advice to discontinue any communication whatsoever you are having with anybody who is promising to help you in getting this payment. Because no other person can release this payment except me as I am directly in charge of every payment approved by the BANK OF ENGLAND such as this.
 
For your own security reasons, this special arrangement should be kept very confidential between you and this office only. You are kindly hereby requested to confirm the receipt of this mail and respond to this arrangement immediately. Upon my receipt of your response, I will furnish you with the details of the transfer.
 
 
I await your urgent response,
Yours Sincerely,
Christine LAGARDE
Director Foreign Exchange
NatWest Bank plc.

Anti-fraud resources: