419 scams began long before most people were using email. Around 27 years ago, my relatives in Texas sent us a tape of 60 Minutes when I was in Lagos, and in the opening monologue the person said "Nigeria is the most corrupt country I have ever reported on or from." Then they revealed lots of American businesses were scammed into thinking they were sending an initial round of money for valid business contracts with government or Nigerian companies. These scams have never been a large organized effort by one entity and the addition of email added in a whole new wave of scammers who enjoyed a lower barrier to entry since less overhead was needed and they could still enjoy enough successes with less sophistication. A lot of them are simply young unemployed guys killing time in internet cafes. In the late 90s the USPS and Secret Service both already had websites warning about 419 scams and although most people are only familiar with the cheesy emails, there is a history of massive amounts of dollars being siphoned out through a wide variety of storytelling by countless actors.
My understanding is that those young guys in internet cafes are not all just independently doing it, but are working a job doing it. Which I guess I actually did for a summer in Canada when for two weeks I sold magazine subscriptions that also awarded prizes when you subscribed (you never got them).
There was 2-3 people who actually ran the call center and made the real money. My friend worked there longer than me and he found out their names were pseudonyms. I think they eventually shuttered the call center and disappeared one day.
> According to the Slidell Police Department, some of Neu’s co-conspirators actually do live in Nigeria. Neo was the middleman who sent the money to the real brains behind the operation.
I don't know about others here, the scam emails I get (and I get several per week) always claim to be from Burkina Faso, _never_ Nigeria. And it's been like that for years. In fact, despite being pretty good at geography, I can't recall what the capital of Nigeria is, but I can rattle off the capital of Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou) with ease, and even spell it correctly, just from seeing it in all these emails.
Besides the fact that Nigerian scammers often have middlemen in North American and Europe to assist the process, 419 scams have come to be commonly perpetuated from a number of other West African countries besides Nigeria.