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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:
- An email address listed inside this email has been used in a known fraud before.
- 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 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.
- apextrustagencye@aim.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: "notario euromillion" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <apextrustagencye@aim.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:20:36 -0300
Subject: account owner
Dear email account owner;
This is to officially bring to your notice of the newly draw result
of Oct, 2009 that your email ID emerged as a lucky winner in our
ongoing lottery annual promotion. Due to mix up of some numbers and names,
we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until your
claims has been processed and your money remitted to you. This is part of
our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of
this program by some participants.
You are therefore require to send corresponding mail notice
to Mr. Pauly Ulrich via e-MAIL in other to confirm if your email
account is still active;
Mr. Pauly Ulrich
Tel: +34634162345
Email: apextrustagencye@aim.com
Mrs. Ann Green
EURO MILLIONS INTERNATIONAL LOTTO
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This mail was scanned by BitDefender
For more informations please visit http://www.bitdefender.com
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Anti-fraud resources:
