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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: "Darryl Wales" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <darrylwaless@yahoo.com.cn>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 23:26:42 +0100
Subject: Hi My Friend
Hello
I am sorry if this email did not meet you in good time, but am just sending you this due to the urgent letter that came to my office here in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, that your funds is being sent to our office for confiscation due to the lack of you meeting up with the following documents.
i) Certificate of Originate funds
ii) NDLEA certificate
iii) International Money Transfer Certificate
iv) Yellow Tag
To us here in Kuala Lumpur we do not confiscate package or funds just like that without emailing the real owner of the funds because we do believe that most owner of this packages/funds sent to us are not being aware of this action taken by the Government of Nigeria or any other country so we decided to email you to notify you that your package is in our office and you are to get back to us if you are still interested in getting your package.
The document mentioned above will be provided to you for free, all you just need to know is to arrange for delivery of the funds/package. If this meet your interest kindly waste no time to get back to us.
Your urgent response is needed within 3days before any action will be taken by us.
Regards
Mr. Darryl Wales
Email: mr_darrylwales@secretarias.com
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Anti-fraud resources:
