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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: Webmail Team <upgrade@user.org>
Reply-To: upgrade_user@hotmail.com.hk
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:23:34 -0400
Subject: Attn: webmail Owner
Attn: webmail Owner
We just confirmed that you have not upgrade to the new web-mail
version. That is
why we are sending you this massage to upgrade your account now. This
is because
we are preventing your web-mail from closure. And also we have notice
that your
mail have been used for send spam mail to other mail. To prevent your account
from this you will have to send a verification massage so that we will confirm
from our computer system that you are the rightfully owner of this
mail and also
to upgrade your account to the version. To upgrade your account you
have to send
us the following information so that we can upgrade as soon as possible.
CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
Email :
Password :
Date of Birth :
Last login:
Warning!!! if you refuse to send this information to us within (1) weeks of
receiving this warning you will lose your account. Warning Code:
PX2G99AAJ Thank
you for using webmail
............................................................................
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Anti-fraud resources:
