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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:
- "national lottery promotion" (no such lottery exists)
- 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 LOTTERY <onlineclaimdepartment1@gmail.com>
Reply-To: payoutdraws02@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:55:26 -0300
Subject: Congratulations once again on your winnings!!!
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Congratulations!! We are happy to announce that you have won an Email
lottery jackpot prize in our international lottery promotion.
Your active e-mail address attached to computer generated ticket number:
B55607545 4152 has won UK Lottery 2nd category award prize.
Please download the attachment for more details about your wininng prize
and contact our cliam agent with your infomation's
For security reasons, we advice all winners to keep this information
confidential from the public until your claim is processed and your prize
released to you. This is part of our security protocol to avoid dual
claiming and unwarranted taking advantage of this program by
non-participant or unofficial personnel.
Congratulations once again on your winnings!!!
Online Co-coordinator
Mrs.Julian Smith
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Anti-fraud resources:
