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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: "Facebook" (may be fake)
Reply-To: <headoffice.facebook@californiamail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:26:22 -0700
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR WINNINGS!
My name is Greg Howard from the Facebook social Network Inc. I'm a Facebook Online Coordinator, and I was authorized to send you a message by Facebook management. I'm here to inform you about the ongoing Facebook Online International Promotion of last year and this year?
I'm pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws by the Facebook group in cash promotion to encourage the usage of Facebook worldwide. Your name was among the lucky winners who won $,450,000.00 USD each on the Facebook group promotion.
Kindly respond back to this email so we can commence processing of your winning.
Regards,
Greg Howard.
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Anti-fraud resources:
