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joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet
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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:
- An email address listed inside this email has been used in a known fraud before.
- This email uses a separate reply address that is different from the sender address. Spammers use this to get replies even when the original spam sending accounts have been shut down. Also, sometimes the sender addresses are legitimate looking but fake and only the reply address is actually an email account controlled by the scammers.
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "dear sir/madam" (a standard Nigerian greeting phrase)
- "united state dollar" (this email uses bad English)
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
- This email lists free webmail addresses. Use of such addresses is typical for scams. Lotteries, banks and any but the smallest of companies do not normally use such addresses. Criminals use them to anonymously send and receive email at Internet cafes.
- info.suntrustbank@consultant.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: "Christine Lagarde" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <info.suntrustbank@consultant.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2018 02:20:43 -0700
Subject: Hello Dear
Dear Sir/Madam:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Investigation Bureau Department in conjunction with other relevant Investigation agencies, we hereby to inform you that we recently received several reports through our Global intelligence monitoring networks that you have a transaction in Africa which wasn’t accomplished after series of process and requires further procedures. Consequently we finally traced the location of the funds and ordered the dispatch or transmitting of the funds to a safe custody in USA. SunTrust Banks, hence the mentioned Bank institute will be facilitating the transferring of the funds to your bank account in your country, this decision was made due to the rate of corruption and scam reports perpetrated by individuals and Government offices/companies in Africa therefore your funds was ordered to be moved to USA immediately for safety.
The transferring of the funds to SunTrust Banks was successfully executed today and we just received a confirmation from Mr. Ray Joseph that your funds valued the sum of (US$20.550m.)Twenty Million Five Hundred and Fifty Thousand United State Dollars was received by the Bank management, therefore we are officially contacting you in this regard by letting you know that your funds are presently safe at SunTrust Banks USA.
Therefore you are advised to contact them immediately with the information outlined below:
SunTrust Banks NY.USA
Contact Person: Mr. Ray Joseph
E-mail: info.suntrustbank@consultant.com
Phone: +1 516 953 4055
Furthermore identification code S-TRUSTXXLFORS was issued by the Bank management which you are required to indicate by using it as the subject of your email for verification or easy identification and the following information are also required from you:
Full name:
Residential address:
Phone number#:
Occupation:
Finally you are advised to completely terminate all your conversation or correspondent with any other individuals, authority or office in Africa who claims to be in the custody of your funds because your funds was officially transferred to USA under our instructions therefore you should completely quit all conversations with any other individual or group except the SunTrust Banks USA. Comply with all their instructions and directives accordingly so they will transfer your funds without any delay.
Yours sincerely
Christine Lagarde
Managing Director
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
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Anti-fraud resources:
