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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: anne fumey <fumeyanne@yahoo.fr>
Reply-To: fumeyanen@yahoo.fr
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:12:52 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Urgent
I really hope you get this on time. I didn't tell you about my visit to UK with my family for a short vacation, but unfortunately we were robbed at the hotel where we lodged along with other folks. We did not bring our phones here and the hotel telephone lines were disconnected during the incident. So we have access to only emails. Please I'm going to need some sort of loan from you for us to relocate to another hotel close to the embassy and also to get another flight ticket. Those thieves made away with our credit cards as well which is why this can't be resolved instantly.
We have been to the Embassy and the Police here are not helping issues at all and our flight leaves tomorrow..Please, Let me know if you can help us out?
I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
With warm regards,
ha.
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Anti-fraud resources:
