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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: phina debor <phina_debor11@att.net>
Reply-To: phina_debor11@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:47:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: greetings from phina
greetings from phina
My regards to your family, I felt like
communicate with you my name is phina is my pleasure with due respect
to cultivate a healthy friendship with you with due respect. I have
great interest in the ocean and travelling, my hubbies are reading and
dancing.
I decided to extend my felicitations to you. Presently I
can not really specify what prompted my drive to write but I did have
the mind that you could be a nice person.
I will like you to
contact me back , So that I will give you full explanation about
myself, I contact you through this medium now in order to provide the
link for detail discussion.
Feel free to write me back .
Your's Sincerely .
phina
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Anti-fraud resources: