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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 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: Microsoft Secretary <mcrosoftmember@wincmail.net>
Reply-To: microsoftgb1@pisem.net
Date: Sat, 17 May 2014 10:05:19 +0000
Subject: Your E-mail Selected (Microsoft Award Winner)
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MICROSOFT CORPORATIONS
Cardinal Place
80-100 Victoria Street
London,SW1E 5JL
United Kingdom
Attention: Email Account Owner,
FINAL MICROSOFT PRIZE AWARD NOTIFICATION
We wish to congratulate you for being one of the lucky selected E-mail
winners of the ongoing Microsoft 2014 AWARDS for using Microsoft
Services.View ATTACHMENT LETTER for more details and directives of
your Award.
NOTE: Please DO NOT REPLY HERE. Kindly View the attachment for more
details to claim your Prize Award.
Congratulations from members and staffs of the Microsoft Award Team.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Jessica Hodson
Microsoft General Secretary, Public Sector
2014 Microsoft UK Promotion Coordinator
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Anti-fraud resources:
