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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: "INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND SETTLEMENT CENTER" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <imfcenter@admin.in.th>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2014 18:33:48 -0800
Subject: (International Monetary Fund ) URGENT RESPONSE
Please Read carefully,
International Monetary Fund (IMF) in conjunction with the United State Government after series of meeting held came up with a sanction to all West African countries to compensate all the foreign victims with a payment benefit of 950,000.00USD each, and your email address was found in the scam victim's list.
Please provide us with the following information below.
Your name.......
Country........
Phone no.......
Address/city.........
Age/sex.....
Occupation....
Get back to the agent in charge of the PAYMNET SETTLEMENT CENTER Mr. Augustine on this email address (imfcenter@admin.in.th )
Note that your payment files will be returned to the or office within 72 hours if we did not hear from you, this was the instruction given by the IMF.
Regards,
Mr. Augustine Pius
MONETARY FUND SETTLEMENT CENTER AGENT
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Anti-fraud resources:
