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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:
- "fiduciary agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
- "bbc-claimdept@live.co.uk" (this email address has been used in a known scam)
- 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!
Fraud email example:
From: info@live.co.uk
Reply-To: bbc-claimdept@live.co.uk
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:13:20 +0000
Subject: Congratulations Email-Lucky winner
Dear: E-Mail lucky Winner,
The BBC COMPANY has set out and successfully organized a Sweepstakes
marking the year anniversary. We rolled out over 10,000.000.00 (10
million e-mails) to mark the 2013 Anniversary Draws.Participants for the
draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide range of web hosts
which we enjoy their BETA patronage attaching personalized email addresses
to ticket numbers.
Your email address as indicated was drawn and attached to Ticket Number
(7PWYZ2012) with Ballot Number (BT:12052012/20) and drew the LUCKY No:
887-13-865-37-10-83(20) which subsequently won you (Five Hundred
Thousand Pounds Sterling)(500,000) as one of the 10 jackpot winners in this draw.
Please contact our fiduciary agent for claims with the contact below
Agent.
Sir.Terry Cole
Email: bbc-claimdept@live.co.uk
Tel:+448719747792
1.Full Name:
2.Full Address:
3.Status:
4.Occupation:
5.Age
6.Phone Number:
7.Country:
Congratulation!!
Always Visit Our Web Site: www.bbc.co.uk/lottery/ for more
Verifications.
Sincerely
Miss.Ann Brown
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Anti-fraud resources:
