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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.
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: "OCEANIC BANK INTERNATIONAL PLC" <info@sender.org>
Reply-To: ocean-atm@blumail.org
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:14:29 +0800
Subject: URGENT Notification
OCEANIC BANK INTERNATIONAL PLC.
CONGRATULATION!!!!
The ATM CARD payment center, OCEANIC BANK INTERNATIONAL PLC has been
mandated to issue out an ATM CARD value of {900,000 GBP} to you which you
can use to withdraw your money in any ATM machine in any part of the
world. You are advised to keep this information confidentially away from
the public to avoid pending of the
delivery of your ATM CARD to you. Note that because of fraudulent claim
(IMPORTANT) impostors, we hereby issued you our CODE OF CONDUCT, which is
(ATM-900) so you have to indicate this when contacting us by using it as
your subject. Complete the
form below and send it to (ocean-atm@blumail.org) for the speedy
processing of your
document and transfer of your ATM card to you in your country.
CODE OF CONDUCT: ---------
NAME IN FULL: ----------------
AGE: --------------------------
SEX: --------------------------
TEL: ---------------------
COUNTRY: -----------------
OCCUPATION: --------------
DECLARATION ....I,Mr/: -------------- do hereby declare that the information
given above is correct to the best of my knowledge and believe the same to
be true.
Mr. Mark Lugard
DIRECTOR OF ATM PAYMENT.
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Anti-fraud resources: