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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

• About the 419 (Advance Fee) scam
• "Is that email a scam?" - Check it online here!
  
• Frequently asked Questions (419 FAQ)
• Phone numbers used by 419 scammers
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• Company names mentioned in 419 spam:
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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.

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 message is a fake lottery scam. Consider the following facts about real lotteries:
  
  1. They don't notify winners by email.
  2. You can't win without first buying a lottery ticket.
  3. They don't randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
  4. They don't use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
  5. They don't tell you to call a mobile phone number.
  6. They don't tell you to keep your winnings secret.
  7. They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!

Fraud email example:

From: Hillary Martins <infohillarymartinss@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 08:28:19 +0100 (BST)
Subject: UK-LOTTO Headquarters: Fred Kuefler


Fred Kuefler,

The entire staff of the LOTTERY congratulate you for being one of the lucky winners in this month’s on-line lottery promotion. You are indeed lucky because your email address won you the sum of £250,000 (Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand British pounds sterling). Your e-mail was among the email accounts extracted for this program and all participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 companies all over the world.

And i want to let you know that your won prize is well protected and the security code is with us and you will get it very soon, all i want to advise you right now to do, is to follow the instruction that is going to be given to you by the Courier or Bank.

Please do contact them for immediate payment.



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Anti-fraud resources:

• What can you do when you receive 419 spam