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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:
- "microsoft lottery" (no such lottery exists)
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "million pounds" (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)
- ",000,000" (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)
- 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: "MICROSOFT LOTTERY PROMOTION 2009" <info@microsoft.org> (may be fake)
Reply-To: john_white04@live.com
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 05:33:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Congratulation
MICROSOFT LOTTERY PROMOTION 2009!!!
This is to inform you that you have won a prize money of ONE
MILLION POUNDS STERLING (1,000,000 GBP) for the YEAR
2009 MICROSOFT Lottery promotion which was organized by
MICROSOFT inc. The MICROSOFT PROMOTION Board, puts
together and arrange e-mail addresses of people that are active
online. Amongst the millions that are subscribed to email/webmail
providers, we only select nine(9) candidates per annum as our
winners through Electronic Balloting System(EBS) without the
candidate applying. We congratulate you for being one of the people
selected. Below are directives on how to claim your prize.
You are to contact the prize co-ordinator to claim your price as directed
(Your cash Prize must be claimed not later than 5 days from date of
notification or will be forfeited.
You are required to send your Personal Information to your prize co-ordinator
for prize remitance;
FULL NAMES:
AGE:
NATIONALITY:
COUNTRY:
SEX:
TELEPHONE:
OCCUPATION:
CONTACT ADDRESS:
PRIZE CO-ORDINATOR: John White
EMAIL ADDRESS:john_white04@live.com
Congratulation once again,
Yours in service,
Ms Amy Anderson.
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Anti-fraud resources:
