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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 phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "dear sir/madam" (a standard Nigerian greeting phrase)
- 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: "FROM EXPO 2010" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <award009@yahoo.cn>
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 02:53:42 +0800
Subject: WELLCOME TO SHANGHAI EXPOLAST REMINDER
FROM THE SHANGHAI HEAVY MACHINERY CORPORATION
SHANGHAI CHINA
Dear Sir/Madam
Your EMAIL ID as indicated was drawn and attached to serial numbers SHEXPO/2010 and drew the lucky numbers 21-456-2010 which subsequently
Select you as one of the 10 jackpot winners in SHANGHAI EXPO 2010 Celebration,
You have therefore won the sum of $250,000 (TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND US DOLLARS)
We only select FIFTY EMAIL ID OWNERS as our award receipients through computerized electronic balloting System
without any one applying,
as our corporate contribution to the SHANGHAI WORLD EXPO 2010 taking place in CHina
Congratulations for being one of the people selected
And due to fraud assocaited with this type of promotion we have instructed all payment to be made through UNION PAY
ATM CARD so that all winners will be able to receive their fund in their country
and use the ATM CARD to withdraw it form any ATM MACHINE in their respective countries.
TO CLAIM,SEND THE BELOW PERSONAL INFORMATION TO
MRS ANN WANG SUI
Payment officer
SHM Corporation,
EMAIL award009@yahoo.cn
1.Name in full:
2.Address:
3.Nationality:
4.Age:
5.Occupation:
6.Telephone Number:/home and mobile
7.Present Country:
8.Email address:
DR (MRS) ANN WANG SUI
DAEWOO CORP SHANGHAI
SECRETARY OF THE AWARD COMMITTEE
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Anti-fraud resources:
