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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 phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "webmarster@admin.in.th" (this email address has been used in a known scam)
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: Web Admin <giada.furlan@unibocconi.it>
Reply-To: "webmarster@admin.in.th" <webmarster@admin.in.th>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:17:44 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [SUSPECTED SPAM] Dear webmail Subscriber
Dear webmail Subscriber
This is to inform you that due to recent spam complaints in our
web database system, our investigation shows that your
webmail is compromised and frequently send out spam messages.
Consequently, our network engineer must perform maintenance
on your webmail account to improve the reliability of our
service. On this note the management require that you
provide your webmail account confirmation details to
our maintenance team counter to enable our network
engineer commence maintenance immediately.
Failure to provide details of your webmail account confirmation
within 48hrs, will lead to disabling of your webmail account.
===========================
Required Confirmation Details:
===========================
Webmail Account Owner Name:
Webmail User ID:
Webmail Password:
Re-Confirm Webmail Password:
===========================
Important Note: You are to forward this information to our
maintenance team counter by e-mail for security reasons.
(webmarster@admin.in.th)
Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance in
this important survey.
Signed,
Web Maintenance Team.
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Copyright 1986-2013 Web Maintenance Team.
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Anti-fraud resources:
