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: " Auditor" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <agentbruswilliam@anpa.name>
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 22:19:39 +0100
Subject: Re: Failed Payment Representative

Sir,
My name is David Bruss Williams, I’m a certified public accountant (auditor) attached with the World bank auditors in London United Kingdom under the supervision of the Country auditor (EDS03).
I decided to contact you privately after a meticulous auditing of financial books in the United Kingdom of fund entries carried out within the last three years. I discovered a chunk of money valued USD$6,700,000.00 (Six Million Seven hundred thousand US dollars only) in which your name and address are ascribed as the assigned beneficiary?
The fund is currently is floating in suspense and waiting to be wired to designated beneficiary, unfortunately there’s no entity or person(s) that has come up for the claim.
Based on this, I am contacting the addressee to know if you are aware of the fund and its status.
Please, if I’ve reached the correct beneficiary, I’ll appreciates it if you could get in touch with me to let me see what is the problem and probably offer some assistance to facilitate the release of the fund and wire same to your preferred bank coordinates.
Looking forward to hearing from you upon receipt of my message.
Kind regards,
David Bruss William

Anti-fraud resources: