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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 fake lottery scam. Consider the following facts about real lotteries:
- They don't notify winners by email.
- You can't win without first buying a lottery ticket.
- They don't randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
- They don't use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
- They don't tell you to call a mobile phone number.
- They don't tell you to keep your winnings secret.
- They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!
Fraud email example:
From: "Lotto Payout Manager" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <gary.quinlan@australiamail.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 18:59:40 -0700
Subject: [**SPAM**] Lotto Payment Notice
Australia Online Lottery
INC.5TH Floor East
Commonwealth Centre
Adelaide Sa 5000, South Australia
TICKET FREE/ONLINE E-MAIL ADDRESS WINNING NOTIFICATION:
Are you the owner of this e-mail address? if yes,then congratulations!
We are pleased to inform you that your email was selected among the winning numbers of the recently conducted Lotto from the Australia Online Power-Ball Lottery Company.
In case you are thinking of how you won without procuring a ticket, then know again that this very draw in which you emerged a winner is a free ticket online email address draws winnings where millions of email addresses are collected from world websites and used for the online draws/sweepstakes.
During the winners selection, your email address came out among the first ten winners which won you the lottery in the first winnings category and entitles you to the sum of $17.5 Million.
This is to inform you that approval has been given for the immediate release of your Lottery Winnings totaling $17.5 Million.
Arrangements have been finalized for the winnings to be forwarded to your designated address.
So, send the following information as soon as possible
1. Your Surname/ Middle Name/ Other Names
2.Address where you want your winnings to be forwarded
3.Mobile and Telephone numbers.
4. Age ( Date of Birth)
5. Occupation
The requested information above is important because it will be used to process your winnings as we can not afford to send your winnings to the wrong person.
Congratulations again.
Gary Quinlan
Payout Manager
Australian Online Lottery
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Anti-fraud resources:
