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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 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: Helen Philips <nhy@fka.att.ne.jp>
Reply-To: helenphil002@hotmail.fr
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 0:02:50 +0900
Subject: From Miss Helen Philips,
>From Miss Helen Philips,
I am Miss Helen Philips, 20 years old girl from CI, Only child/Daughter of Mr Johnson Philips. I have 6.7 million USD which was deposited by my father before he died in Novenmber 2005 and the money is in a suspence account in a bank here in my country.
I seek your permision to remmit this amount into your account so that i could come to your
country for investment and to further my studies. I have accepted to offer you 20% of the total sum for your desire to assist me. Please do respond immediately you recieve
this mail for more informations regarding the transfer.
Please, Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible with your contact details.
My Best Regards
Miss Helen Philips
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Anti-fraud resources:
