joewein.net   joewein.de LLC
fighting spam and scams on the Internet
Try our spam filter!
Free trial for 30 days
  jwSpamSpy

Home
About Us
Spam
419/Nigeria
Fraud
Contact

"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.Tony Ken <tonyken@Telex Dept.CBN.ng>
Reply-To: tonyken78@yahoo.co.uk
Date: 15 Aug 2012 06:12:15 -0000
Subject: After a serious thought

Dear Beneficiary After a serious thought, I decided to reach you directly and personally because i do not have anything against you, but your Nigerian partners. I am the director of wire transfer/telex department of the central bank of Nigeria,Sometime in the past your Nigerian partners approached me through a friend of mine who works with one of the ministries here and requested that I assist them conclude a money transfer deal .they told me to help program the transfer to you. According to them, they wanted to use this strategy to transfer a huge amount of United States dollars, the money has been floating in the CBN suspense account since then. We agreed that once I do this, they would give me $200,000.00 and give me another us$200,000.00 when I release the fund to your account. When they saw that I have programmed it and your name has been approved among the list of those to be paid, instead of giving me the agreed deposit of us$200,000.00, they started avoiding me and resorted to threats. I immediately deleted the transfer code of the fund, which is only known to me because of my position, and released other contractors' fund and inheritance payments without yours. They became angry. When they saw that their threat did not work, they started bribing other officials to get another approval to transfer the money to you without success. I want you to know that I am 100% responsible for the delay and obstructions because of their breach

Anti-fraud resources: