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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: "NATIONAL POSTCODE" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <postcodeclaimdept@aol.nl>
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:09:49 +0100
Subject: [G-VIRUS] PRIZE AWARD DETAILS
Warning: This message has had one or more attachments removed
Warning: (the entire message).
Warning: Please read the "ServerMaster-Attachment-Warning.txt" attachment(s) for more information.
This is a message from the MailScanner E-Mail Virus Protection Service
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The original e-mail attachment "the entire message"
was believed to be infected by a virus and has been replaced by this warning
message.
If you wish to receive a copy of the *infected* attachment, please
e-mail helpdesk and include the whole of this message
in your request. Alternatively, you can call them, with
the contents of this message to hand when you call.
At Sat Feb 20 23:15:20 2010 the virus scanner said:
Denial of Service attack in message!
Note to Help Desk: Look on the ServerMaster MailScanner in /usr/local/MailScanner/var/quarantine/20100220 (message 1C5A057606.5E69C).
--
ServerMaster
Your Organisation Name Here
mail.hanjenfood.com.tw
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
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Anti-fraud resources:
