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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: "K12 Technical Support." (may be fake)
Reply-To: <nrmrhuanjun@yahoo.cn>
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:39:25 +0100
Subject: Account Upgrade Maintenance All K12 Subscribers.
Attn. K12 Subscribers,
Account Upgrade Maintenance All K12 Subscribers.
We regret to announce to you that we will be making some vital maintenance on our K12 accounts. During this process you might have login problems in signing into your K12 account, but to prevent this you have to confirm your K12 account immediately after you receive this notification.
To confirm and to keep your K12 active during and after this process, please reply to this message with the below K12 account information's. Failure to do this might cause a permanent deactivation of your K12 account from our database to enable us create more spaces for up coming subscribers. Send your K12 account for confirmation stating:
Email Address:
Password:
Your account shall remain active after you have successfully confirmed your account details. We thank you for your prompt attention to this notification. Please be informed that this is a security measure intended to help protect your K12 account{s}. We apologize for any inconvenience.
K12 Technical Support
Copyright K12 2011. All Rights Reserved.
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Anti-fraud resources:
