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: Internal Revenue Service <giacomo.avaro@alice.it>
Reply-To: mrjkoskinen2@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2018 10:47:39 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Greetings From The Internal Revenue Service United States

This office is hereby warning you to desist from sending someone else to come
and claim your fund without any prior information to them. This is making it
the second time such thing is happening, you have to know that this is IRS
Commissioner, Mr.John Koskinen, and our main work is to make sure that you
receive your fund.which is $10.5 million(USD) So please if you are not ready to
come or send the required fee to release the documentations of your fund and
have it conveyed to you, then kindly wait until you are ready or you should
write an application letter to our office for approval and you should also send
the person with enough proof, if not then you together with the person you send
will be handle according to the law.

Yesterday, we received another email this time from a Man called Mr.Eric, He
called with this telephone number: +1 772-249-3857 and his email address as;
ericml825@gmail.com, informing us that you are dead and that He's your next of
kin, so we should send your fund to His home address: 1011 s 7th St. Water
town, WI 53094. He also told us that you instructed Him to claim your
properties including your funds in-case you are nowhere to be found as your
next of kin.

He also recommended that He knew He was going to send some money to get the
fund transferred to He's because you told Him something like that and we should
let Him know the cost to release the documents to have the fund conveyed to
him. We asked Him to hold on, so that we verify as we did not discuss that with
you before.

Please clarify us if you are still alive to know if this is true or not because
we are confused now about this claims and you are advice to get back to us
immediately, because it’s your response that will determine what we will do on
this issue.

Your response will be highly appreciated if you are still alive.

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. John Koskinen
Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
Email: I.R.S@usa.com

Anti-fraud resources: