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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: "INSPECTOR IBRAHIM IDRIS" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <scamreport@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2018 04:12:37 -0700
Subject: INVESTIGATION REPORT ON DEALINGS YOU HAD WITH SCAMMERS

The Nigerian Police
Force Headquarters
Shehu Shagari Way
P.M.B 153 Abuja-Nigeria
website: www.npf.gov.ng

Motto: Loyalty and Justice

Good day,

The Internet Crime Division of the Nigerian Police collected information from the Internet Fraud Complain Center and we discovered that you have been communicating with scammers for the past few years now regarding your unpaid fund and additional investigation revealed that you have spent a lot of your hard earned money just to accomplish the successful transfer of your fund to your bank account by obtaining transfer documents as demanded by scammers, costing you a lot of money but all to no benefit, in the process of our investigation, we discovered that the reason why you have not received your fund is because you have been making contact with the wrong people who claimed to be somebody else just to extract and steal money from you.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience or lost these people might have caused you in any way and I want to use these medium to assure you that your fund will be released to you along with all the money you lost to those scammers, I must tell you at this point in time that you should have reported the issue to the Nigerian Police before you started sending money to scammers but not to worry, those scammers are under investigation and I promise you that those people involved in this scam will be brought to justice for given this great country a bad name and influence all over the world.

Meanwhile your fund is still available and will be transferred to you through the real paying Bank. As soon as we verify that all information and report about you been scammed is true, I will send you a protocol to contact the Bank for immediate transfer of your fund. Note that your real total sum of US*$10 million dollars will be released to you as soon as we make our verification that you are who you say you are and that the information which you gave to us about being scammed is true.

Once again, we apologize on behalf of the President and the good people of Nigeria for any delay and lost those scammers have coursed you and we promise that such will not happen again because we are here to protect you and make sure your fund is successfully transferred to you. We are waiting for your reply to enable us serve you better.

Remain blessed.

IGP Ibrahim Kpotun Idris
The Inspector General of Police

Anti-fraud resources: