I recently made a purchase after finding a forum post on google of something I was in need of.
After payment he simply deleted all telegram messages and blocked me.
typical behavior of scammers that uses telegram, deleting all telegram messages after getting the payment. just curious, did you use escrow? the forum has some reputable member that has escrow services that anyone could hire to prevent incidents like this.
How many other people did this guy hit without having any kind of punishment on the forum?
there's really no way to tell unless the victims came forward and tell their experiences and evidence. also, the forum does not regulate scams so no punishments are coming for the scammer from the admins, staff or mods. but members can leave the scammers negative feedback that can be reviewed on their profile by all members.
Another question that leads to this is why in this sales topic on the forum do you have the option to leave the post blocked for replicas?
This option had to be prohibited for buyers to report whether they received the product or not.
do you mean the threads being locked? the reason for that is because the thread is created by them and they have the capability of locking it but they cannot delete it.