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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:
- 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.
- This email message is a next of kin scam.
Fraud email example:
From: Christopher Green <cg@mail.com>
Reply-To: christophergreen836@live.com
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 05:45:18 -0700
Subject: Request For Your Assistance
--
Greetings,
I know you would be surprised to read from someone relatively unknown to
you.Apart from being surprised you may be skeptical and refuse to reply
back to me as one needs to be very careful due to the invasion of the
internet world in recent times by dishonest people who are nothing but
scammers.
I am currently working with a team of external auditors that is under
retainer ship engagement by the HSBC Bank to audit its activities in the
entire British Isles since last year.
In the course of a routine audit of the HSBC Bank, I discovered some
investment accounts that have been dormant for some years. . However
there is a particular one among the accounts that stands out for me. The
current balance is 18.5 million GBP .No activities has been carried out
on this particular account since year 2000.Statutorily, an investment
account is regarded as dormant if such an account is not operated for a
5-year period. In other word this particular account has been dormant
for 11 years. It goes without saying that this unusual extended period
of dormancy on an account with such a huge sum aroused my curiosity as a
professional auditor.
But after a discreet investigation on the name of the account owner, I
have just found out that he died in year 2000, which is the year the
account was last operated. He may have died obviously died intestate
which is responsible for why nobody has come forward for claims all
these years. I have been weighing a lot of options on how best to make
these funds my own without the knowledge of the authorities. You will
appreciate this more when you realize that I have been keeping every bit
of my discovery secret for such a long time while pondering on how to
contact a prospective partner like you. I decided to go for an option
that will be of immense benefit to both of us, with an explicit
understanding for both of us to share the amount on a mutually
agreed-upon percentage.
I must use this opportunity to implore you to exercise the utmost
indulgence to keep this proposal extraordinarily confidential no matter
whatever may be your decision. If you are interested please contact me
at once to indicate your interest to enable me give you more details
regarding the procedures and strategies to be adopted.
Christopher.
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