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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 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: GUINESS PROMOTION<megamillionpicknplay@luckymail.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:31:52 GMT
Subject: Congratulations
We gladly wish to inform you of the draws of the Guiness Lotteries
in conjunction with Picknplay Megamillion Lotteries held on the 29TH of September 2010 in Milano, Italy .
You along with 25 others were selected winners under draws 6+1 in our
monthly draw program .However your e-mail
address attached to ticket number 706-7855-4356-126 with serial
numbers 5223-54 drew the lucky numbers 31-05-25-67-75-04 and
consequently won the lottery in the 2nd category.
You are hereby advised to contact the claims manager for claims.
Name : Shirley Umberto
Email: shirleyumberto@games.com
CONGRATULATIONS!!
Regards,
Renzo Hubert
Draw Cordinator
NEVER SEND SPAM. IT IS BAD.
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Anti-fraud resources:
