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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:
- The following fake company names, fake addresses, non-existent institutions/documents or other details have appeared in scams before:
- "uk national lottery" (can only win this lottery if you bought a ticket)
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "claims agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
- This email message is a fake lottery scam. Consider the following facts about real lotteries:
- They don't notify winners by email.
- You can't win without first buying a lottery ticket.
- They don't randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
- They don't use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
- They don't tell you to call a mobile phone number.
- They don't tell you to keep your winnings secret.
- They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!
- This email lists mobile phone numbers. Use of such numbers is typical for scams because they allow criminals to conceal their true location. They can receive calls in an Internet cafe from where they send you emails, while pretending to be in some office.
- +447031970065 (UK, redirects to a mobile phone in another country)
- This email lists free webmail addresses. Use of such addresses is typical for scams. Lotteries, banks and any but the smallest of companies do not normally use such addresses. Criminals use them to anonymously send and receive email at Internet cafes.
- richardlotteryclaimdept10@yahoo.co.uk
Fraud email example:
From: "UK NATIONAL LOTTERY" <lottofree8@bellsouth.net>
Reply-To: richardlotteryclaimdept@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:56:15 +0000
Subject: Congratulations ***You Have Won Ref Number: UK/9420X/05 ****
You are a winner of the UK National lottery online program that was held on the 8th of October 2007. You have been approved to claim a sum of£1,200,000.00 (One Million Two Hundred Thousand British Pounds Sterling), which is equivalent to ($917,956.00 USD) in cash credited to Ref No: MELI-T/ 17-F044262312, Batch No:901/00319/HLP, Zonal Draw No: GMLA2-003, Grand Draw No: 12099. After randomly selecting 15,000 email addresses from an initial database of 300,000 email addresses from the web, your email address emerged as one of the winning email addresses.
Contact our claims agent by email:richardlotteryclaimdept10@yahoo.co.uk,Tel: +44 703-197-0065, Mr. Richard Carpenter. Provide him with the following information to claim your prize. Full Name:Address, phone Number,Country of residence:Sex:Age Occupation:
Yours Truly,
Mrs. Stella Ellis.
Co-ordinator(Online Promo Programme)
Anti-fraud resources:
