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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: (sent from abused email account)
Reply-To: info@webmail.com
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 02:43:51 -0400 (CLT)
Subject: Dear User Account
Dear User Account
This message is from your web help desk administrator messages. This is to
announce that we update our database and e-mail account center
because of the high spam flowing through the Internet.
We are canceling unused webmail account to create more space for new
accounts and protect your e-mail spam.
To prevent your Webmail account is closed, you will need to update the
below to see its status as a currently used account.
Follow the link Support e-mail address below to perform necessary
maintenance work to improve the protection and improvement of your account
for us to verify and get your account deleted from this virus;
Click here to confirm：
http://onlineaccountactivationnowactive.weebly.com/
Warning!
Any account that is not updated within three (3) days after this update
Notification will be revoked permanently.
Thank you for using our e-mail web.
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Anti-fraud resources:
