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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: "BMW COMPANY PROMOTION®" <mail25@w89y5tb6t.homepage.t-online.de>
Reply-To: <mrdonaldwinsley@aol.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:45:51 -0700
Subject: BMW AWARDS 2011
We are pleased to inform you of the release, of the long awaited results of the BMW CAR INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION PROGRAM held on the 12TH September, 2011.You were entered as dependent clients with: Ticket number:2752246876.Your email address drew the lucky winning number for a payment of £450,000.00 in cash and a brand new BMW 5 Series credited to file reference number:AT-040SA06-03. You are to contact our-accredited agent for your claim now
PLEASE KINDLY READ THE ATTACHED FILE AND REPLY IMMEDIATELY.
BMW COMPANY PROMOTION
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Anti-fraud resources:
