EXCLUSIVE

It's the opposite of those online scams -- a Nigerian company claims it was screwed out of a fortune by a wealthy American ... and now he's suing Floyd Mayweather to get his money back.

The company behind the lawsuit is Zinni Media -- which claims it booked Floyd to make 5 appearances in Nigeria and Ghana in June 2017 ... for the low, low sum of $375,000!!!!

The company says it got Floyd to make a video confirming the appearances -- so, they thought they were good to go! They even wired him $210,000 in advance.

But, days before the first event, Floyd bailed -- and the company was left holding the bag.

In the suit, Zinni claims Floyd's reps offered to reschedule for Dec. 2017 -- and added more appearances to the list -- but, he also raised the price to $550,000. Zinni claims they were told they could use the $210k toward the new booking price.

Zinni says they ACCEPTED the new deal -- but, when they asked Floyd to make a new video confirming the new dates, he bailed again ... and never returned the original $210,000.

Now, Zinni is taking legal action in federal court in California -- claiming Floyd damaged their reputation and defrauded them. Zinni wants at least $2 MILLION to make things right.