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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:
- An email address listed inside this email has been used in a known fraud before.
- 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:
- "fiduciary agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
- "hundred thousand us dollars" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "00,000.00" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "(ecowas)" (the name of a person or institution often appearing in 419 scams)
- 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!
- This email lists free webmail addresses. Use of such addresses is typical for scams. Lotteries, banks and any but the smallest of companies do not normally use such addresses. Criminals use them to anonymously send and receive email at Internet cafes.
- guinnesspromo.002@gmail.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: "GUINNESS CUSTOMERS PROMOTION" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <guinnesspromo.002@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 12:39:07 -0500
Subject: Winning Notification!!!
iGUINNESS CUSTOMERS PROMOTION
DV-2012 programmed
St. Christo Road 4324 Uzuala.(ecowas)
Guinness Plc, West Africa.
Winning Notification.
We happily inform you about our (Guinness National Lottery Programmed) held on the 3rd of April 2013 which your email enterd as a dependent client and finally took the 1st position in our second (2nd) category winners that falls within the west africa region. Your email was attached to the ticket number(44-40-23-777-01) which made you a winner of Five hundred thousand US dollars($500,000.00) and your name will be recorded in our guinness world book of record as the 1st lucky winner of the year 2013. You have been approved the sum of Five hundred thousand US dollars($500,000.00) which will be sent accross to you immediately.
All emails are selected randomly through a computer ballot which subsequently won you the sweeptake of guinness internet web lottery. This is part of our security mearsures put in place to avoid double claiming or a situation where unwanted person(s) would be taking negative advantage of this promotions, thereby impersonating in order to claim another persons winning prize.
Here is our fiduciary agent MR PABLO williams, responsible for the processing / release of your winnings prizes.
AGENT: Mr Pablo Williams
EMAIL: guinnesspromo.002@gmail.com
GUINNESS CLAIMS department.
You are required to forward the following details to help facilitate the processing of your GUINNESS CLAIMS CERTIFICATE AND YOUR FUND.
Fullnames... / Residential address..... / Phone
number.... / Occupation.... / Sex ..../ Age.... / Present
country ..../ Marrtal status...
ONCE AGAIN, CONGRATULATIONS!!
Mr Henry Woods
GUINNESS CUSTOMERS PROMOTION.
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