why do nigerians want to buy my stuff on craigslist?

when i put an expensive item for sale on craigslist i get more responses from nigeria than from local buyers. it's hilarious. they all offer to pay hundreds of dollars extra for me to ship it to them and they send me fake paypal confirmations (riddled with horrible spelling and grammar) to try to fool me into shipping the item. it's fun to engage these idiots. when you tell them that no money has been deposited in your paypal account they say it's a new policy that paypal doesn't release the money until i send the buyer proof of shipping by supplying a shipment number from UPS or whomever will be delivering the package. yeah, right...who would possibly believe such nonsense?

are these people ever actually successful in scamming everyone? nigeria is crawling with these dirtbags...... who falls for their scam?

anybody know a way to counter scam these dirtbag scammers?

Go to http://www.419eater.com. You'll get ideas on how to play with their heads. Also, http://thescambaiter.com is another good site.

I played along for awhile, I received a check for $1200.00 for my $200.00 item, with instructions to cash it, send back the rest minus $100 for my troubles.

I had them mail it to my work address with a phony name (I get all mail, so no problem there) - they actually sent the check UPS overnight! (cost them at least 10.00 right there)

The fun part was the fake check used the name of a real Washington DC business, so I told my email contact I cashed it and sent the remainder back to the business named on the check, not to the address he gave me - oops! lol He wasn't happy at all, and further emails began to imply "serious trouble" would be heading my way.

I finally got bored playing, so I told him I think he was scamming me, and that I turned all emails over to the FBI. He never emailed me again.