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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: Webmail Administrator <info@mail.com>
Reply-To: claimsdept@live.com
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:43:41 +0300
Subject: Account User Info
--
Dear Account User,
Welcome to Webmail Administrator
We hereby announce to you that an automatic error message alert was
received in our database from your email account. Your Email account has
almost exceeded is Quota Limit! We are currently carrying out possible
maintenance on your account.
You might be unable to send and receive email, and this could make your
email account ineffective and as well as possible deletion from database.
To avoid this and to assist us in sorting out this problem we advise that
you verify your account and upgrade by filling out the details below:
EMAIL ADDRESS:
USERNAME:
PASSWORD:
CONFIRM PASSWORD:
DATE OF BIRTH:
Note: changes in database may take 2-3 business days.
Thank you.
Web Administrator
Remote Webmail Service
SS's Unix/IMAP mail service
C 2011 UCLA Web Administrator
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Anti-fraud resources:
