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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 fake company names, fake addresses, non-existent institutions/documents or other details have appeared in scams before:
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "fiduciary agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
- "hundred thousand great british pounds" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- ",000,000" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "00,000.00" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "claimsmanager34@live.com" (this email address has been used in a known scam)
- 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: "Microsoft Award Team" <info@micro.com>
Reply-To: claimsmanager34@live.com
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:52:07 -0600
Subject: ANNOUNCE YOUR CLAIM!!!
--
Microsoft Award
Team 20 Craven Park, Harlesden London NW10 United Kingdom Ref: BTD/672009/09 Batch: 67920088E
Congratulation!! The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organized a sweepstake
marking 2010 anniversary, we rolled out over � 25,000,000.00(Twenty five Million Great British Pounds) for our
yearly online usage email promotions. Participants for the draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide
range of World Wild Web (www) email hosts from whose patronage we have become what we are today. Your email
addresses as indicated was drawn and attached to ticket number:2008727060609 with serial numbers:BTD/672009/09 and
drew lucky numbers:83-15-91-67-32-21(08) which subsequently won you �500,000.00(Five Hundred Thousand Great
British Pounds)in our yearly organized email awareness/marketing campaign. Necessary Informations and
procedures would be passed across in due course.Once again Congratulations and we do hope to hear from you
soon. ============================================================================== You are advised to contact
your fiduciary agent with your winning details **Full Names **Country **Residential
Address **Occupation **Age **Company Name **Phone **Gender **Next Of Kin ============================================================================== sincerely, Mr.Robin
Williams Fiduciary Officer Awareness Promotions board Email: claimsmanager34@live.com +448713152053 +448713152884
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Anti-fraud resources: