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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.
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "million united states dollars" (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)
- "million united state dollars" (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)
- "united state dollar" (this email uses bad English)
- 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.
- westernuno@yahoo.com (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: Mr Williams Edward <companylove28@gmail.com>
Reply-To: westernuno@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:51:00 -0700
Subject: Attn Beneficiary
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HELLO RECIPIENT!!!
We are officially announcing to you the result of the United Nation/World
Bank Email Lottery Promotion held on june 10th
th,2022
as our
International Yearly promotion award. Your name was attached to
refereance number YBsNGWB/UN/2022
Withdraw number P7013YBNGWB which consequently won in the 2nd category
prize, your email address was extracted from our electronic email
extraction
system which randomly selected Ten (10) Lucky Winners of which your email
address was among one of the lucky winner.
You have therefore been approved for a payout of a total sum $10.5 MILLION
UNITED STATE DOLLARS.
This is to inform you that a Debit Cash Card Number 7876310003001420
Valued
$10.5 Million United States Dollars has been accredited in your favor.
Please contact : Mr. Williams Edward
Email:{ westernuno@yahoo.com } With the following information to
facilitate your claim,
FULL NAME:......................... .....................
AGE:.......................... .................... ......
GENDER:....................... .................... ......
ADDRESS:...................... .................... ......
COUNTRY:...................... ...........................
OCCUPATION:................... .................... ......
PHONE NUMBER:....................... ....................
ID Copy...........
You are hereby advised to provide all the necessary information to enable US
facilitate on the immediate delivery of Your ATM MASTER CARD worth $10.5
Million united state Dollars.
THANKS.
Director ;Richard
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Anti-fraud resources:
