I don't trust anyone with less than 15,500 posts unless I KNOW them.
I got burned awhile back with a powdercoating thing. Well there was probably 10 of us total. I've had good luck otherwise. I'm a mod on another site which has a unique way of handling scammers. We kill them and there have been no complaints so far. Haha, we kill complainers too.
Sounds like it's been a real issue recently.