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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: NATIONAL LOTTERY <noreply@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: dr.carlthomas@live.com
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:47:05 +0200
Subject: Congratulations!!
THE NATIONAL LOTTERY.
Attn: Email Account Owner,
Your e-mail ID has won you the £750,524.00 GBP grand prize from THE
NATIONAL LOTTERY Charity Bonanza, held on Saturday June 24th,
Draw no.1722 Winning numbers 03 25 28 30 39 45 BONUS 05 which brought
out your E-mail address from the World Wide Web (Internet and Web Information
Systems (WWW) Data Base and Qualified you a bonafide winner of the stated
winning amount.You are to contact Dr. Carl Thomas via e-mail (dr.carlthomas@
live.com)providing the below stated information for process of immediate
redemption of your price winning prize.
Name===Country of Origin==Present location/Address===Mobile No.
===Age====Sex===Occupation
CONGRATULATION.
Thank You.
NB: You can follow this link to view your resulst: https://www.national-
lottery.co.uk/player/p/results.ftl
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Anti-fraud resources:
