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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:
- An email address listed inside this email has been used in a known fraud before.
- This email message is a 419 scam. Please see our 419 FAQ for more details on such scams.
- This email lists free webmail addresses. Use of such addresses is typical for scams. Lotteries, banks and any but the smallest of companies do not normally use such addresses. Criminals use them to anonymously send and receive email at Internet cafes.
- mark.hoffman@gazeta.pl (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: "Mark Hoffman" (may be fake)
Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 16:41:32 +0800
Subject: REFINED AND CRUDE PALM OIL URGENTLY NEEDED
Dear Sir/ Madam,
I am writting you regarding this proposal due to certain conditions about my employment contract with my present company.
My proposal is buying and selling. The commodity is Refined Palm Oil.
Our company is interested in buying 1000 MT of Refined palm oil for the start; the purchase could increase to 50,000 MT.
I have a supplier in Malaysia who sells at the rate of $ 690/MT. The company I work for could pay as much as $900/MT.
If you are interested, I will introduce you to our company as the supplier so that our company can contact you directly for the purchase, then I will give you the contact of the Malaysia supplier. But you must make sure that our company does not have any direct contact with the original supplier in Malaysia so that we wouldn’t stand the risk of losing out on this deal.
I will be waiting for your kind response
E-MAIL: mark.hoffman@gazeta.pl
Regards,
Mark Hoffman
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Anti-fraud resources:
