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Very first paragraph of the Wikipedia page: "Nigerian scams (also called Nigerian 419 scams), are a type of advance fee fraud and one of the most common types of confidence frauds in which the victim is defrauded for monetary gain.".

The scam the blog author describes is not of this type. Nigerian scam refers specifically to the type of scam where people want your help "transfering large sums of money out of their country".




The particular incident that triggered the first use of the word "Nigeria" on the page in question was being fake-sent $500 instead of $400. This is a sign of a common variant of the scam, where extra fake-money is sent, and then the fake-buyer asks for a partial refund (see the Variants section of the Wikipedia page, particularly the first paragraph under "Online sales and rentals".)

The scam eventually took a different direction, but in the early going it definitely fit the stereotype.

So, to fully answer the question from the earlier poster: "Nigerian Scam" is a generic term referring to a broad category of scams. This particular scam looked like one of the common variants in its early stages.

EDIT: to even more fully answer that question, it's not fair that Nigerians have been stereotyped with the label "scammer" because of this sort of scam. I'd prefer a more neutral term, but I don't know of a good one.


The problem is that most of Nigerians that Americans know (through Internet) - are scammers.

Even though most of Nigerians are not scamers.


It may be interesting to note that merely the term "419 scam" implies Nigeria as well, since the 419 is referencing a specific section in the Nigerian Criminal Code.




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