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: "Nathan Browel"<engr.brown@xt4cy.com>
Date:
Subject:


Dear beloved,


I pray you find peace with this. I’m Engr Nathan bro-well from United state of America and I have lived here in Dubai for 54 good years , I am husband to Dr.Ruth browell Underwood an Ex-Chair lady of T.O.C. London who died in an air crash on a vacation to the Canary Islands, Spain Wednesday, 20 August, 2008.Here is the proof

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7572643.stm

We were married with no child and I decided not to remarry since I’m now old.When my wife was alive, she deposited money in a finance house which she intended to use for a charity project and the bank wrote me a week ago to come and claim this money as the next of kin or give an authority letter to someone who can do it for me.I can’t do this myself because I am presently in a hospital where I’ve been taking treatment for cancer of the pevics for the past four years. My doctors have told me that I have only a few weeks to live, which is the I decided to use this fund for charity work.

I have no good person in our family who can do this for me, so I decided to look for a sincere person or family who can use 80% of the fund to run the charity project. As soon as you respond, I will write an authority letter to the bank to release the fund to you and I will be happy to discuss more with you. I want you to promise me that you will use this fund exactly as I have said and get back to me with redacted@domain.name)

 I await your urgent reply.

Thank you so much
Nathan Browel
ENGR.NATHAN BROWELL

Anti-fraud resources: