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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:
- "national lottery promotion" (no such lottery exists)
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "dear friend" (a common phrase found in 419 scams)
- "huge amount of money" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "is 100% risk free" (almost true for the criminal trying to scam you - arrests of online criminals are rare)
- "capt.lewisbrown@live.com" (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!
- 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.
- microclaimsoffr1@aol.com (AOL; can be used from anywhere worldwide)
Fraud email example:
From:
Date:
Subject:
by HZDFYD.com MailServer with ESMTP by
mail.xsedu.zj.cn Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:49:29 GMT
Reply-To: <microclaimsoffr1@aol.com>
From: "MICROSOFT INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY PROMOTIONS 2011."<info@service.com>
Subject: DEAR FRIEND
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 06:49:26 +0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Dear Friend,
My name is Lewis Brown, a Captain in my country Army now on a tour of duty in Northern Iraq. During one of our duty assignment, we stumbled on an Al-Qaeda dump site where was stacked many arms and also cash dollars to the amount of over $50 Million. We only declared the arms and kept quiet concerning the money. The money was shared among us and I being the Platoon commander got $10.7 Million.
My tour is not finished yet and because of my status I am not eligible to possess such a huge amount of money. So I am seeking a trust worthy person who will stand as the beneficiary of this fund on my behalf and move the money to his country and hold it on trust for me until I am back from my national service.
You will be entitled to 20% of the total sum for your assistance. Please bear in mind that this transaction is 100% risk free and also highly confidential so you need to keep it to yourself alone for security reasons because of the huge amount involve. Expect your urgent response through the below email address.
Email: capt.lewisbrown@live.com
Please respond to me with your contact details so as to disclose to you the where about of this fund and further details you need to know.
Best Regards,
Capt. Lewis Brown.
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