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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:
- "million 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)
- 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: "MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOT LOTTERY" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <MegaJack@asia.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:55:35 +0700
Subject: CONGRATULATION !!!
FROM THE LOTTERY BOARD DEPARTMENT
MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOT LOTTERY.
Congratulations to you, your email address has been selected amongst one of the 5 winners of $2.4 million dollars to be awarded each year by The MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOT LOTTERY Board Inc. your email address have been selected as one of the winners. You are however required to claim or denounce your winning amount by providing us with your Full details. Once again congratulations.
Kindly provide us with the below details.
VERIFICATION/FUNDS RELEASE FORM
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Full Names:
Contact Address:
Nationality:
Occupation:
Sex:
Age:
Land Telephone No. (If any):
Mobile Telephone No.:
Email Address:
Marital Status:
Employer (If Any):
Contact Email Address:
You should however require to forward your details
If you have won before, you cannot win again.
You should be very careful of Fraud E-mail, we received complaints regarding falsification of our name. We want to bring to your notified that we have confirmed Winning Yesterday in our office.
You have to claim your winning amount in less than 4 days from today, our Organization is ready to send down Representative to your Country. Please if you received any other Lottery Claim apart from this email from anyone. You should not respond to it.
We are going to do everything that we can; so that you can receive your winning prize four days from now.
Claim your Winning Prize immediately.
Best regards,
MRS.CHRON DAVID
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Anti-fraud resources:
