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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: "DR JAMES OBI" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <jamesobi88@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 00:18:18 -0800
Subject: CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA COMPENSATION UNIT,IN AFFILIATION WITH THE UNITED



From Dr. James Obi
Chief Accountant General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Federal Secretariat Towers (5th & 10th floors)
Shehu Shagari Way, Central Area, Garki, Abuja.

CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA COMPENSATION UNIT,IN AFFILIATION WITH THE UNITED
NATIONS.

Dear Sir/Madam,

How are you today? Hope all is well with you and your family? You may not
understand why this email is coming to you. I am Dr. James Obi, the Chief
Accountant General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Due to series of petitions received from International Bodies on the manner
at which fraudsters around the world especially Nigerians defrauded them and
took over all or part of their entire life savings, the Governor of the
Central Bank of Nigeria and my good self unbehalf of the Federal Government
of Nigeria have been having a meeting with the Secretary-General to the
UNITED NATIONS, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for the past 10 days. This
meeting ended 3 days ago,and our main objective was to device possible means
of compensating some of those people that has been defrauded in the past by
those unknown fraudsters.

Being the outcome of our meeting,we are sending this email message to
selected people that has been scammed in any part of the world through one
way or the orther, the UNITED NATIONS have therefore agreed to compensate
them with the sum of US$ 500, 000. 00 (Five Hundred Thousand United States
Dollars only) for each and every selected fraud victim. This includes some
of those foreign contractors or inheritors that could not receive their
contract or inheritace payments, and people that have had an unfinished
transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government
problems etc.

We found your email address on the list of selected fraud victims supplied
to us by the UNITED NATIONS and that is why we are contacting you.It has
however been agreed upon that you should be paid with immediate effect
following the approval of your payment by the Central Bank of Nigeria in
aggreement with the UNITED NATION'S Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

You are therefore advised to get back to us as soon as possible, to enable
us instruct the Central Bank of Nigeria which is the United Nation's Paying
Bank here in West Africa to pay you.


Congratulations!



Yours Faithfully


Dr. James Obi
Chief Accountant General (Federal Republic of Nigeria)
Central Area, Garki, Abuja.

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