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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: Victoria Kone <vicykone@aol.com>
Reply-To: vickykone@aol.com
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 13:58:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Reply Urgently pls.
Please forgive me for writing you without previous acquaintance. This is a desperate move to save myself and I hope you will help me. It is barely 6 months since I lost my husband, but my in-laws could not even allow me to grieve the death of my husband before attacking me. I have heard of this happening to widows and never imagined I could be at the receiving end someday. But that is my fate. While my husband was alive, it has been all good with the family but now everyone has turned against me. They want to strip me of everything my husband and I owned together. But I thank God that there wish will never come true. I thank God because my husband must have known his family well enough to have taken the step he did to safeguard my future in case of anything.
There is money he deposited in one of his banks and the family does not know about this deposit. They have taken everything else and I am afraid if they find out about the deposit, they will take it also. I need the money to be transferred out of here immediately and I will relocate as well. I need you provide a bank account in your country to receive this money. Once the money is there, I will come over to your country and I will pay you some percentages of the money for your assistance and you may assist in investing the balance.
What I need now most is for you to receive the money and assist me relocate to your country. I cannot risk losing the deposit because it is my last hope. This is why I decided to make this desperate move because involving anybody here will leak out the information to them. I want the money transferred as soon as possible before they get to know about it. Will you help me? Please I need your urgent response.
Sincerely,
Victoria Kone.
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