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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.
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- ",000,000" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- "00,000.00" (they want you to be blinded by the prospect of quick money, but the only money that ever changes hands in 419 scams is from you to the criminals)
- 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: "Gareth Brown" <annamaria.raponi@comune.roccapriora.roma.it>
Reply-To: garethbrown969@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2022 06:22:55 +0800
Subject: Donation
Warm Greetings,
My Name is Attorney Gareth Brown. I have my client's (Mr. Charles Jackson Jr.) firm instruction to contact you and help finalize the claims of the donated cash prize to you. My client was the mega winner of $344.6 million Power ball Mega Millions Jackpot: WATCH HIM HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MUR8QEIMQI
He is donating Sum of Three Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars to 5 random people. After a computerized email selection system (ESS) from a database of over 100,000,000.00 email addresses drawn from all the email server's world over, your email was selected to receive the donation prize courtesy of my client benevolence. Your secret donation code allotted to you is: RFCJ-441672020468302.
Get back to me at the earliest so i can send you further details for claims without further delay. Congratulations once again!
Yours truly,
Attorney Gareth Brown
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Anti-fraud resources:
