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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 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: "Uk National Lottery" <info@winner.co.uk>
Reply-To: jerybrown2001@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:05:06 -0400
Subject: Congratulations Lucy Winner ! ! !
This is to officially inform you that The result of our computer draw 844 of this day
selected your names and email addressattached to Ticket Number 034-22478556 with serial
number 129 which consequently won the United Kingdom Lottery grand prize awards in the
2nd category held in June.You have been confirmed as a Category B winner of the United
Kingdom Lottery computer ballotingdraws. Your claims file has been duly forwarded to
this office with specific instructions that we shall be handling the transfer of your
prize of £1,000000.00 GBP.(One Million Great Britain Pounds) to your nominated account.
Kindly send the below information for claims.
Full Name
Home Address
Phone Number
Age
Sex
Nationality
Occupation
Country Of residence
Best Regards
Mr Jerry Brown
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Anti-fraud resources:
