What I can't get my head around is why these people even bother? This person registered in February, made the 5 posts required to get out of newbie section and then proceeded with his 'cunning plan'. Assuming that only two of us were stupid enough to send him any money he will have made what, a few hundred dollars? For less effort he could make twice that in a week conducting legitimate business...
Seems logical but you have to remember in some places of the world "a few hundred dollars" will last for quite a long time. Even in more familiar areas of the world (like where I post from in the USA) there are people who simply have lots of pots on the scam stove. So a person might be a MLM, Post ads on Craigslist to try to steal Ebay accounts, take surveys online, or whatever. Plus a lot of scammers are easy to scam themselves, all you have to do is offer to sell them the means to perform a scam (like scammers in India getting scammed by being sold "Legitimate IDs" to take surveys online as a non-Indian) so they might be trying to recoup losses as well.
Most scammers are piss-poor since only a few get a big payout and the rest are just foolish people with no long term planning ability.