Apparently, internet romance scams are also common these days. And that wikipedia page describes variants that are 419 scams.
At least some of it is that Nigeria has a large population. About twice the next most-populous African country, and more than the least-populous 33 countries combined. So, if scammers were equally distributed in Africa, you’d still get quite a lot from Nigeria.
Interesting, she would have been in one of those two largest pieces of the pie chart at the time (either just above or below 50) so she fit the demographic.
I didn’t realize romance scams intersected that frequently with the 419 scams, but apparently they aren’t that unique. Thanks for the info.
I don’t know why Nigeria took it up. As to why Russia didn’t, I can only guess, but I would propose the following:
419 scams require a good amount of back-and-forth conversation. This requires brute manpower and, outside of 3rd world nations, it’s generally not economical to make money that requires significant human labor. If the Russians have available, cheap labor for such pursuits, it would be their women and the Russians were probably already profiting from their women via sex trafficking, and probably by more than they could get by running confidence scams.
I believe that Russian Mafia’s big ‘industries’ are sex trafficking, ad revenue on digital piracy (and porn) sites, and the arms trade. While their internet connection might be better than Nigeria’s, it’s probably swamped with exporting copyrighted Hollywood films and camgirls.
Public perception of the corruption in Africa makes the stories more plausible than if they had come from somewhere else.
Nigeria is also Anglophone, which gives them the most potential targets.
The original 419 scam, the Spanish Prisoner (linked by zimaane above), often involved the promise of marriage to the prisoner’s beautiful daughter. So romance has been tied to 419 scams from the very beginning.
We knew a fellow - someone who certainly should have known better - whose life was ruined by a romance scam though in his case the motive appeared to be to use him as a drug mule rather than for direct financial ruin.