Did Armor actually test any of these services?
There's nothing mentioned in the report I linked to above to suggest that they bought or attempted to buy any of the services they are reporting on, including all those which use bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. As you say, there is no shortage of scammers on the clear web, so why would there be a shortage on the dark web, where it is essentially impossible to take any real action against spammers. This essentially sounds like the twitter scam of "Send 0.5 ETH to get 5 ETH back", but with extra steps. I would, however, be surprised if
every one of the services or trades that are mentioned in the report are scams.
I'm not exactly familiar with trading illegal services on the dark web. Are escrows a thing?
I'm sure some of them are legitimate hackers, for sure, but the large majority are outright scammers, copy pasting the same tactics that worked 20 years ago.
Escrows are a thing on darkmarkets themselves, but that's a good point. Those services Armor's talking about? They don't do escrows. You send them Bitcoin, and they promise to Western Union you money. It's classic, just as beautiful as the Nigerian Prince scams, because it works.
I think guys like Armor give too much credit to kiddie scammers. And they have no clue about what happens. They just enter these markets, get their heads done in by the amazing things they see on sale, and then scramble to write a report that's not substantiated.
Like you said, I don't think any of the services were tested. Armor took the ads at pure face value.