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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: "Allen & Violet Large" <e.naiane.cruz@fca.unicamp.br>
Reply-To: allen_large1@126.com
Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 18:50:08 -0300
Subject: Greetings to you
Hello Dear
My wife Violet and I Allen Large won 11.2M USD in a lottery 6-49 in July, 2010 and we
have decided to donate the sum of 2M USD to you as part of our charity project. Contact
us via our personal email for more details. You can verify this by visiting the web
pages below.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11699678
Good Luck,
Allen & Violet Large.
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Anti-fraud resources:
