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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: "Mr John Ben" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <mrjohnben22@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2017 03:17:53 -0700
Subject: Next Of Kin
ATTN:<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">My name is Mr.John Ben.of credit and foreign bills of Plc. I am writing in respect of a foreign customer of my bank with account number12-266-2017//t who perished in a plane crash with the whole passengers aboard Since the demise of this our customer by name Barry Wilson I personally has watched with keen interest to see the next of kin but all has proved abortive as none has come to claim his funds of usd.15.M, [Fifteen million united states dollars] which has been with my branch for a verylong time. On this note, I decided to seek for whom his name shall be used as the next of kin as no one has come up to be the next of kin.And the banking ethics here does not allow such money to stay more than five years, because money will be recalled to the bank treasury as unclaimed after this period.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div>&l!
t;div dir="ltr">In view of this
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Anti-fraud resources:
