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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

• About the 419 (Advance Fee) scam
• "Is that email a scam?" - Check it online here!
  
• Frequently asked Questions (419 FAQ)
• Phone numbers used by 419 scammers
  (+225 +229 +234 +27 +31 +32 +34 +44 other)
• Company names mentioned in 419 spam:
  1 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
• Support our efforts to stop scams!
  
• How to report 419 spam to us
• What can you do when you receive 419 spam
  
  
• Spam archive, Daily index
  

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.

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:

• The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
  • ",000,000" (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:
  
  1. They don't notify winners by email.
  2. You can't win without first buying a lottery ticket.
  3. They don't randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
  4. They don't use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
  5. They don't tell you to call a mobile phone number.
  6. They don't tell you to keep your winnings secret.
  7. They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!

Fraud email example:

From: EastatlAnticDeliveryExpress EastatlAnticDeliveryExpress
<eastatlantic.deliveryexpress5@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 23:10:11 +0100
Subject: Winning clearification



Winning clearification

Your email address won you the lottery in the first winning category because the draw was a free ticket online email address sweeptakes and your email address won you the lottery in the category A which gets you entitled to claim the sum of $4.6m.
And Yes your email address was selected among the the first category winners and that left you as a winner of the uk lottery online draws and sweeptakes programme.

The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 29,031E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. However, no tickets were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy.
The selection process was carried out through random selection in our computerized email selection machine (TOPAZ) from a database of over 1,000,000 email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world.

To finally ascertain you as a rightful receiver of the winning check, you will have to send us the following: Your name, country, address, amount won, ticket and lucky numbers, date and venue of draw, contact tel and mobile numbers, age, sex, occupation and job title.

Yours Faithfully
Mr. Donald Hou


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Anti-fraud resources:

• What can you do when you receive 419 spam