When people do the email check scam, why do they always pick Nigeria as the "from" country?

What is it about Nigeria ?


This kind of check scam





http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/14757...





I've also seen numerous ones in my own email, and they all say Nigeria, either that or sometimes ( Rarely London ) ?

When people do the email check scam, why do they always pick Nigeria as the "from" country?
It also happens to be the place where this sort of scam originated and still has a high concentration of activity. In fact Lagos, Nigeria has so much activity that the US Postal Inspector sent agents there to try and shut it down.





http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/14757...





Also, since most of the original letters used Nigeria as the location, others just used the same letters so it spread.





As for why Nigeria as opposed to some other country I don't think there's anything particular about Nigeria. It could have easily started in some other country with high levels of corruption, lax banking laws and little threat for extradition to Western countries.
Reply:just because Nigeria has oil therefore extremely wealthy and is notorious for corrupt officials who siphon off huge amounts of the countries wealth. It is to lend legitimacy to the claim that they are genuine.