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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.
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "million united states dollars" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "is 100% risk free" (almost true for the criminal trying to scam you - arrests of online criminals are rare)
- This email message is a next of kin scam.
Fraud email example:
From: "Lee Taehee" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <leetaehee121@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 10:37:49 -0700
Subject: Contact me
Greetings.
I am a bank manager here in Cambodia. I contacted you for a reason , one of my late customer have the same name as yours . He died 4 years ago and left , 10.7 million United States dollars in his account . Since then no relative have come to claim his money .
my client died with his family in a car crash during summer holiday of 2010 in France. His account mandate does not have any contact of any of his relatives as next of kin. I have made several inquiries to your embassy to locate any of his relatives without any success, I have been mandated by my bank management to provide the next of kin to his account. If i don't get any of his relatives in 29 days the account balance of $10.700,000 will be returned to the government treasury.
Since you have the same surname with the late account holder and i cannot find any of his relatives I now I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin to the late account holder. You and I will share the money 50/50 after the money is transferred to you. I think this is fair decision instead of the Cambodian government taking the money.
I was his personal accountant before he died , i have all the vital information for us to claim the money without any problem .I only worry about your ability to keep this transaction secret to protect my job The transaction is 100% risk free as I have studied and investigated the transaction properly as a professional banker and discovered that it's risk free before making contact to you.
If you are interested i will tell you what we need to do to claim the funds within 2 weeks
Mr.Lee
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Anti-fraud resources:
