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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.

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Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "Elizabeth Appiah" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <elizabethnwa1@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2019 07:40:17 -0700
Subject: Greetings !

Sir/Ma,
Greetings to you & compliments of the season. I am Elizabeth Appiah. I work with Royal Bank of Ghana.

This is a very sensitive information I'm passing on to you and I sincerely hope you'll try to understand and co-operate with me because I feels pretty comfortable with you and think I can trust you for this and I pray you'll keep this confidential too. I work with Royal Bank of Ghana, Operations department. There's a Bank account here in my branch that I've been watching for more than five years now, It's a domiciliary account originally owned by a defunct American Oil and Gas Firm that operated in Ghana.

All these years, there haven't been any transactions going on in the account, nobody is coming for it and I discovered from my private investigations that the only signatory to the account has passed on in the US and His next of kin could not be traced, the account holds approximately $3,745M USD. I needed a foreigner for this, and I will like you to stand as the Next of Kin to claim this money and get it transferred to you while I'll resign and come to meet you over to finalize the deal. I have all documents relating to the said account including documents submitted by original owner at account creation.

I will be taking over as Operations Manager of my branch in 4 weeks because my boss would be retiring. If you agree to do this with me, I would have to change the Name of Next of Kin of the account holder to your Name as Beneficiary now that I'm still in my present position, because once I get promoted and whoever that will take over my current position gets to know about that money, The Bank or maybe any of my superiors that come to know about it, would take over ownership of the funds or divert it.

I don't want to be directly involved in the process but I will do all the underground work, give you directions of what to do and make sure after all necessary documentation done by you to redeem the funds in the account, I will do the final endorsement of the transaction. After successful the transfer of funds to your provided US account, We'll set aside 10% for all expenses from both sides while 40% for you and 50% for me. Maybe we'll have to discuss more about it on phone or email(+233 577246881)(elizabethnwa1@gmail.com) if you are interested. Or you can also forward your phone number for more clarification and understanding.

Thanks

From: Elizabeth Appiah
elizabethnwa1@gmail.com

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