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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 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
Fraud email example:
From: Account Upgrade/Maintenance <helpdesk@webmaster.org>
Reply-To: webmasterhelp1977@hotmail.com
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:12:11 +0100
Subject: Account Upgrade/Maintenance.
Attn. All Webmail Users,
Account Upgrade/Maintenance.
We regret to announce to you that we will be making some vital maintenance on our Webmail account. During this process you might have login problems in signing into your account, but to prevent this you have to confirm your account immediately after you receive this notification.
To confirm and to keep your Webmail account active during and after this process, please reply to this message with the below account information's. Failure to do this might cause a permanent deactivation of your webmail account from our database to enable us create more spaces for up coming subscribers.
To confirm your account, send your webmail account stating:
Email Address:
Password:
Your account shall remain active after we have successfully confirmed and upgraded your account.
Thank you for your swift response to this notification we apologize for any inconvenience.
Technical Support
Copyright 2009 - Communciations - All Rights Reserved.
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Anti-fraud resources:
