This scam is hilarious and reminds me instantly of:
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
The scale of scams is increasing so much and so deep into the deep core of this boards accounts, that its just a matter of time until more "heroes" turn into "villains". They are not even "individuals", whole groups now and this thread is rather proof of how easy it is to stall and steal along the way and by now all of them have surely already made enough (they wouldnt do kamikaze killing an account before turning it into profit) to just laugh at this and continue on with the next one.
Like in chess, they are protecting their kings and queens with horses and towers - that is after you managed your way through the pawns.
How much longer you think until there will be open accusations against the people (somewhere outside of bitcointalk as Im sure here they would get deleted instantly) running this board in assisting, providing the grounds and protection, enabling and closing both eyes for/on scammers?
Imagine we dont play police academy here but ask a crime investigator, based on all material, on his opinion? Make some crowdfunding for that, get one and I think you would be surprised. Already in the first step, after going through the amount of scams and accounts involved, leads will first point to the ones with the biggest power on this board and they cant hide behind some "right for privacy" (keeping their mouths shut) right. Oh yea, they can in court, but the judge will consider that in his final verdict.
Lets imagine they are all "innocent", THEN, instead of a crime investigator, make a crowdfunding for a doctor/psychiatrist - because surely the diagnosis must be "blindness" , "mentally handicapped" or some form of "autism" - because thats whats going on here is not normal. How can this be going on for such a long time and the only excuse is like "you have to be smart & use escrow" - and then when you do that - like a miracle, all scammers start using higher and higher accounts and more & more of them. And nobody noticed or did anything? Its all normal? Sure. Anyone ever calculated how many scams happened here and how much more or less the amount was in total? I think you would end up in the newspaper with it - you are partly protected due to non-interest by public. This board is an open invitation for scammers. Perhaps you should create also ranks for them? Like "Joker" or "Two-Face"? Robert should get his own avater, dont you think? To make it even easier, scammers should leave positive/negative feedback the other way round (i think one did once ala "Can recommend this guy, really easy to scam" - that was funny).
A side-product of this all is that you create scammers yourself, especially many newbies, they learn quickly what kind of rotten format this all has and in order to get their money back, they just copy the scams - its just too easy. If this is supposed to be the "Bitcoin way of living" then its shit and deserves to be labled with terrorists, illegal activities and dodgy business.
Lets say, some people higher up even know its going on like this but "dont care" because, for instance, they "expect a certain rational maturity when dealing with people" etc. - then you should be tried for "failure to render assistance". I would love to see the "right for privacy & account selling" vs. "failure to render assistance" in court.
And yes, dont start with Bitcoin blabla.. anonymity ... blabla... before and after all that, there is a rule of law. A scam is a scam, even when you scam for heroin - there is no excuse contrary to what is scammed and what kind of form it has. Later the guy scamming the heroin, in this example, will get prosecuted for illegal substance blabla.. but, the scam itself is another crime. A scam is like a planned intention of harming someone else - and at times, for this alone you will get a harsher penalty than for what the scam was.
Im telling, to finish off the way i started, for all heroes:
"There is a storm coming"
