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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:
- An email address listed inside this email has been used in a known fraud before.
- 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!
- This email lists free webmail addresses. Use of such addresses is typical for scams. Lotteries, banks and any but the smallest of companies do not normally use such addresses. Criminals use them to anonymously send and receive email at Internet cafes.
- aidenvr@hotmail.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: "Mr. Aidenv" <info@powerball.com>
Reply-To: 750498142@qq.com
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 15:13:57 -0700
Subject: ..OneMillionEuro..
Greetings
I am an Unemployed Sydney man and I won the Powerball Lottery Jackpot of $50 million on my first ever lottery ticket. To verify my lottery winnings, kindly visit the below webpage: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-12/powerball-lotto-unemployed-sydney-man-wins-$50-million/8520054
My wife and I agreed to genuinely help people by donating half of our Lottery winnings to friends and family and to individuals we have never met before as part of our charitable contribution to humanity. We are very happy for this blessing in our life and we want everybody to win along with us.
After a computer spinball, your email address was among the FIVE random emails that were submitted to me by the Google Inc. as a web user. As such, the owners of the FIVE email addresses has qualified to receive our donation of 1Million Euros each from our offshore paying bank in Europe.
If you know you are ready to receive it, kindly introduce yourself as requested below.
Full Names:
Mobile No:
Age:
Address/Country:
Occupation:
Our only term is that you must help the less privilege people within your locality with part of your donation sum.
Send your response to: AidenvR@hotmail.com
Best Regards
AidenvR
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