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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: "Database Information Technology service" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <mimsekgirl@aol.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:54:51 -0800
Subject: UPGRADE YOUR ACCOUNT
This message is from the Database Information Technology service
messaging
center, to all our e-mail account holders. All Mailhub systems will
undergo regularly scheduled maintenance. Access to your mailbox via
our mail portal will be unavailable for some period of time during this
maintenanceperiod.
We shall be carrying out service maintenance on our database and e-mail
accountcenter for better online services. We are deleting all
unusede-mail accounts to create more space for new accounts.
In order to ensure you do not experience service
interruptions/possible deactivation Please you must reply to this email
immediately confirming your email account details below for
confirmation/identification.
_____________________________________
1. First Name & Last Name:
2. Full Login Email Address:
3. Username & Password:
4. Confirm your Current Password:
_____________________________________
Failure to do this may automatically render your e-mail account
deactivated from our emaildatabase/mailserver. to enable us upgrade your
email account,
please do reply to this mail.
Thanks.
Upgrade Team
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Anti-fraud resources:
