You've stated a problem and its cause in the same post, so I'm not sure what we're meant to do here. Scammers and spammers are some of the worst people to deal with, and fighting scams attracts swarms of them to attack. Its not fun and its a thankless job, so who would bother?
Three people have bothered, Quickseller, Vod and Tomatocage. One of them no longer has the influence to have his ratings displayed by default, one has left the community (close to perminently), and one has become much too conservative in handing out negative ratings (in order). I don't think it is entirely a thankless job, I have seen many people say they appreciate the work that all three of them do individually. I have also seen many people post that each of them should be consulted to check if something is a scam or not, so there is reason to believe they do earn a level of respect for tagging scammers.
I think you are right that scammers (and spammers) are going to put a lot of effort into smearing the likes of the above examples I provided. Just look at the "I hate Quickseller", and "I hate Vod" threads, they quickly agree with eachother, potentially agreeing with themselves via sockpuppet accounts - but then again, I am pretty sure you for some reason have a lot of experience with that - at least a lot of experience of being on the receiving end of that.
