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: "Tony Ross" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <refund.payment@unitedsnations.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:33:15 +0200
Subject: .respond now

Good day.

This is to officially notify you that our International law enforcement from 61 countries has dismantled online scam networks in several countries, identifying over 14,600 possible suspects across all continents, arresting over 3,900 suspects and seizing $257 million in illegally obtained assets.

The operation was conducted by police, targeting phishing, investment fraud, fake online shopping sites, romance scams, and impersonation scams which your email address was found in one of the arrested scam artist possession hence we are reaching you as published: https:// therecord.media/4000-arrested-in-global-cybercrime-scam-crackdown-interpol

get back to us so that we can direct you to the bank where the fund was deposited as we are compensating only 98 persons globally from the recovered fund.

Get back to us now.

Tony Ross.
refund.payment@unitedsnations.org
Financial crimes enforcement network (FinCEN)

Anti-fraud resources: