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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:
- The following fake company names, fake addresses, non-existent institutions/documents or other details have appeared in scams before:
- "uk national lottery" (can only win this lottery if you bought a ticket)
- 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 mobile phone numbers. Use of such numbers is typical for scams because they allow criminals to conceal their true location. They can receive calls in an Internet cafe from where they send you emails, while pretending to be in some office.
- +447024092611 (UK, redirects to a mobile phone in another country)
Fraud email example:
From: "NATIONAL LOTTERY" <tony147@mchsi.com>
Reply-To: ajhall100@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:36:18 +0000
Subject:
--
On the behalf of the UK National Lottery Board, I
hereby announce that your
email has been drawn winner of the program held on
Sat 1st November. 08.
Your e-mail address won in the 2nd category and
you are hereby entitled to
500 000GBP (Five Hundred Thousand Pounds).
Contact Mr J. Hall
email:jp.hall@live.com,
your Full
names:,Address:,Occupation:,Tel:,Sex:,Age:,Country.
Kevin Hensley
Coordinator.
Tel:+447024092611:+447024094833;+447024096930
Anti-fraud resources:
