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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: "CHURCH OF GOD MISSIONARY/EAGLE CHARITY FOUNDATION" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <tailin22@live.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:52:21 +0800
Subject: CHARITY FOUNDATION
CHURCH OF GOD MISSIONARY/EAGLE CHARITY FOUNDATION sends her greetings to you,
this is to let you know that you have been picked as a beneficiary of our annually charity work
recently introduced on the net. Before now, we have touched many lives in charity works on
ground and we have decided to go a step further in touching lives and so we had to go on random
selection of email addresses and whoever email address is picked either rich or poor automatically
becomes a beneficiary of our charity work and so you are to be given the sum of 800,000 united state
currency. Contact Tai Lin on the email address below providing the information requested to get your
Funds: tailin22@live.co.uk, your details should include,
NAME:
AGE:
COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE:
SEX:
OCCUPATION:
ADDRESS:
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Anti-fraud resources:
