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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: "United Nations Office" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <revben_richards@yahoo.es>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 14:19:24 +0300
Subject: Your Payment Is Ready
Attn: Sir ,
This is to bring to your notice that the Federal Government
of Nigeria has mandated this office to recover all floating
/ unclaimed fund and transfer them back into the federal government
treasury.
In the course of carrying out this exercise, we discover
that your fund ($5.8M ) is among the unclaimed fund.
After due verification, it was discovered that you have
done alot to receive this fund.
I want to know if you are still interested in receiving
this fund or should we send it into government treasury?
We wait to hear from you urgently.
Best regards,
Rev. Felix Awele
Chairman Contract Award / Payment Committee
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Anti-fraud resources:
