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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 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!
Fraud email example:
From: "STOCK MARKET INC" (may be fake)
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 01:46:53 +0800
Subject: CLAIMS NOTIFICATION
THE STOCK MARKET INC
40, GRAFTON WAY
LONDON, WC1E 6DX
UNITED KINGDOM
REG-QC NUMBER: UK-SML-8390471-MC
SERIAL NUMBER: UK-SML-3-202/99/10/2010
DRAW NUMBER: 0029882/SML
We congratulate you this day as you have emerged a winner in the just concluded Stock Market Inc. Lottery blast. Kindly refer to the PDF file attachment for more details and guidelines
Thank you
Sincerely,
Victoria Walton
Membership Director/Announcer
Stock Market Incorporated
This message and its attachments are for designated recipient(s) only and may contain privileged, proprietary and private information. If you have received it in error, kindly delete it and notify the sender immediately.
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Anti-fraud resources:
