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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:
- "united state of america" (this email uses bad English)
- 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.
- pwball.center@gmail.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: "Power-Ball Lottery Organization" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <lottodepartmentoffice@yahoo.co.jp>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2014 09:03:05 -0700
Subject: Are you the owner of this e-mail address?
Are you the owner of this e-mail address? if yes, then congratulations
We are Pleased to inform you that your email was selected among the winning numbers of the recently Lotto conducted from the United State Of America Online Power-Ball Lottery Company and we shall be glad if you can claim your Prize Fund,
please respond to this mail within 48 hours otherwise we will assume that you are not interested.We conducted the Lotto using Lotto as part of our tax relief program set up by the Power-Ball Lottery Organization, On this note we congratulate you and wish you best of luck as you claim the prize attached to this Lotto.
These are your Identification Numbers.
Ticket number.........085-12876077-09
Serial number........51390-0
Lucky number........12-26-44-46-47-29
Ref number........pbwol-805-093USA
(i) Your name.
(ii) Contact telephone
(iii) Contact Address.
(iv) Your ticket and prize numbers.
(v) Quote amount won.
(vi) Notification date.
Mr. Gerald Levert
Power-Ball Paying Center
E-mail: pwball.center@gmail.com
In case you are thinking of how you won without entering, Then know again that this very draw 28th of June, 2014 in which you have emerged as a winner of Power-Ball Lottery Organization was a free ticket online email address draws winnings where thousands of email addresses was collected from almost all over world websites and used for the online draws/sweepstakes and during winners selection your email address came out among the first ten winners which won you the lottery in the first winnings category and entitles you to claim the sum of USD$6.2Million without any hitches.
Once again Congratulations.
CONGRATULATIONS
Yours faithfully
Dir. Paul Cameron
Online Sweepstakes Coordinator
WEBSITE: www.powerball.com
©Copyright 2014.
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