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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.




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