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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: "Yahoo Mail Customer Care" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <customercareyahoo@mail.mn>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 00:43:21 +1100
Subject: VERIFY AND CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT TO AVOID CLOSURE !
Dear Account User,
VERIFY AND CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT TO AVOID CLOSURE !
This Email is issued by Yahoo Account Services of the merging unit of operating board. We have sent this email to you for safety. We are having unnecessary congestion resulting from numerous anonymous registrations of various email accounts.
Due to the congestion, we would be shutting down most email accounts which appeared anonymous and unused on our secret assessment unit. Your Email account was among those to be deleted. This email is a notification for you to verify and indicate to us if you still want to keep and use this account.
To confirm your E-mail account, fill out your Login Informations below after clicking the reply button.
* User name: .............
* Password: ................
* Date of Birth: ...........
Subject to Email accounts client protection policy, we will not access your email account. We require your user name, password and date of birth to due automatically on our secret assessment unit were every valid account appears to safeguard your email account from automatic deletion by our system.
Your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal if you fill out your Login Informations as listed above.
Warning!!! Refusal to this demand will suspended your Email account anonymously and your email account will be closed permanently without further notification on our termination date.
Thanks for your attention to this request.
Regards,
Yahoo ! Account Services
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Do bear with us as we upgrade to serve you better
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Anti-fraud resources:
