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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 fake company names, fake addresses, non-existent institutions/documents or other details have appeared in scams before:
- "yahoo lottery inc" (no such lottery exists)
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "claims.dept_msn@live.co.uk" (this email address has been used in a known scam)
- 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!
Fraud email example:
From: tej@hathway.com
Reply-To: claims.dept_msn@live.co.uk
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:22:51 -0800
Subject:
Dear Lucky Winner
We are Pleased to inform you that you have won a prize money of
(750,000.00GBP) by Msn/Yahoo Lottery inconjunction with the
MICROSOFT WINDOWS. we collects all the email addresses of the
people that are active online, among the millions that subscribed to
Yahoo,Hotmail and various Microsoft window users, we only select five
people every year as our winners,through electronic balloting System
without the winner applying.
Batch number.....................YW/08872/PY
Ref number.......................WL/7662/5AQ
Winning number...................WZ554/30
How ever you will have to fill and submit this form tothe events manager
Mr george Sammour.
1. Full Name..............
2. Contact Address........
3. Age....................
4. Telephone Number.......
5. Marital Status.........
6. Sex....................
7. Occupation.............
8. State:.................
9. Country................
10.Nationality............
11.How Do You Feel Has A Winner.....
Your Reference and Batch number at the top of this mail:
(CONTACT EVENTS MANAGER)
Name:Mr George Sammour.
E-mail: claims.dept_msn@live.co.uk
(Msn/Yahoo Lottery Games/Lottery Coordinator).
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Anti-fraud resources:
