|
|
joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet
|
|
"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:
- 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 friend" (a common phrase found in 419 scams)
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: JANE CLINTON <janeclinton0011@gmail.com>
Reply-To: whitespunky@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:29:41 -0700
Subject: hello
--
Hello Dear friend this is from FBI INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT I am
hereby to let’s you know that we go a report from one of your family
friends and according to the woman she told us that you have lost a
lot to those African liars and criminals roaming around online looking
for someone to screw out money and we later look into the matter and
we hosted a meeting last week about this issues because your report
are not the only report we have got about this same issue of scam
victims and we later agreed to put eyes on the ground and start
verifying and tracking those scammers one by one and the ones we
arrested from that last week pay back times 5 of the money they
scammed from people and we shared it among those scam victims we had
their reports and your own share is a sum of $7 million which we will
use to compensate you first and after that we will put eyes on the
ground and track those that have been dealing with you and know whose
are fakes and whose are real ok
|
Anti-fraud resources:
