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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.
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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.
- The following fake company names, fake addresses, non-existent institutions/documents or other details have appeared in scams before:
- "uk national lottery" (can only win this lottery if you bought a ticket)
- The following phrases in this message should put you on alert:
- "fiduciary agent" (real lotteries do not use a "claim agent" / "fiduciary agent")
- "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!
- 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.
- uk.terrycole@hotmail.co.uk (email address has been used in a known fraud before)
Fraud email example:
From: (sent from abused email account)
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 09:38:41 -0600
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Congratulation,_You_Have_Won_=A3800,000.00?=
The National Lottery
PO Box 1010
Liverpool
L70 1NL
Send your Reply to uk.terrycole@hotmail.co.uk<mailto:uk.terrycole@hotmail.co.uk>
This electronic mail is to inform you that you have
won the sum of £800,000.00 (GBP) in the
UK National Lottery Official On-Line Draw through a random selection
of email address. This draw is done Monthly.
The official drawing for the aforementioned jackpot
was performed in Liverpool at the Office of the
National Lottery Commission at 12:00pm on November 1st,
2008. In the above noted drawing, your
contact information was selected from a pool of
24,667,309 Emails extracted through the world wide web.
Your winning information's are:
Winning Num: 18, 19, 25, 30, 33, 43 Bonus 04
Batch Num: R3/A312-59
Reference Num: LSUK/2031/8161/05
For additional information in claiming your prize,
you must contact our fiduciary Agent
at the below noted email address;
Mr. Terry Cole (Fiduciary Agent)
Email: uk.terrycole@hotmail.co.uk<mailto:uk.terrycole@hotmail.co.uk>
For verification please provide your:
Name
Address
Sex
Telephone Number
Age
Occupation
Batch and Reference Number when responding.
Thank you and congratulation.
Lowrey, Cherish
Fiduciary & Notification Department
THE NATIONAL LOTTERY
Anti-fraud resources: