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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 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: "Sandra Fabian" <sandrafabian225@libero.it>
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:19:41 +0100
Subject: Good Day!!!
Dear Sir/Ma,
This message is to Officially inform you of the result of the 2009 Online International Email Sweepstakes Lottery Program held on the 9th of June 2009 in Madrid Spain.Your Email Address has emerge the Winner of the Award sum of €1.000.000.00(One Million Euros) when it came out in the first category with the Winning Number (ESP-97878) .It was attached to the Batch Number (ESP-64548)/Reference Number (ESP-66453) and Rolled through a computer Ballot system along many other email address.Do please Contact Mr.Mark Paolo (Euromillions Lottery International) for Clarification and Claim with the Contact Tel: 0034634136054 and Contact Mail Box(eeuromillions50501@ozu.es). All winnings must be claimed not later than 14 days and do note that Yours Faithfully,
Mrs Sandra Fabian.
Promotion Co-ordinator.
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Anti-fraud resources:
