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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: "Andreas Tiedtke" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <aandreas.tiedtke@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2017 16:02:50 -0500
Subject: Good Day Dear Friend

Good Day Dear Friend,
 
I am glad to use medium to reach out to you. I am Andreas Tiedtke, a German by birth and former California State Legal Counsel, now a member of the Washington DC Judiciary, since 2013, also a finance adviser. I had a client who was a Mexican American, an oil merchant in both USA and Mexico.In 2005 he was diagnosed with various ailments after some tragic incidents he experienced towards end of 2004.However, he was admitted to an acute care facility with esophageal cancer in late 2005, which later took his life on the 21st day of January, 2006. In 2004,he had lost his wife to chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, and lost his only child in a car crash in Florida, hence the deadliest Hurricane Charley incident in same year 2004. You can open the following link to read about Hurricane Charley (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml#charley), the young man was studying medicine in the University of Florida and was in his final year.
 
In 2003 he confided in me earlier, we both had visited a financial institution in New York City where he saved $21m U.S dollars as project fund. Both him and his wife had arranged the fund to build a hospital for their son as a surprise after graduation. However, the young man (my client's son) was the Next of Kin to the deposited fund! But because he's late too, I want to use your information to update the deposit file as a relative and make you the successor. Because my client died without updating his WILL, therefore, I wasn't able to reach any of his relative or extended family, so none of them is aware of this particular fund deposit, although all my efforts to reach them are being abortive and was to no avail. So nothing to worry about, I shall provide you the deposit documents and other appropriate legal backup document for the claims from the finance house where the funds were deposited, this is no jokes. If we ignore these funds, the US government will confiscate it and use it for their selfish reas
 
You must keep this correspondence as a top secret because of my person in the U.S Government.  For security reasons, you can email me from your private email address if this email is not secured enough. Upon your response, I will give you further updates and my ID for you to see.
 
Acknowledge the receipt and understanding of this message.
 
Best regards,
Andreas Tiedtke.

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