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: "James Westcott" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <james.westcott1@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2016 10:30:22 +0100
Subject: Dear Friend,

Dear Friend,

My name is James Westcott, director of audit and accounting department of my bank. On a routine inspection I discovered an abandoned sum of $ 15,000,000 ( fifteen million US dollars ) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer , a citizen of your country , who unfortunately lost his life and his whole family in a fatal car accident.
He died without a beneficiary to the account, my research and review of the account opening file proved that his supposed next of kin died with him as a result of the accident.

The bank will approve this money to any foreigner who has information about this account , which I will give to you because the former operator of this account was a foreigner. Therefore, I need your full cooperation in this transaction; I will provide all the necessary information to back up the claim.

You will have to send me information about yourself , so I will rely on you for this business , your full name and address, including your private phone / fax number and your profession .

Finally, kindly reply me stating your interest, and I will give you the details and necessary procedure to make the transfer a success.

My contact number is +22996615825. You can call or send a text message (SMS).

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

James Westcott.

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Anti-fraud resources: