A good friend of mine told me that bitcointalk is full of scammers and fraudsters. I did not believe him at first and he pointed out this thread. This is just epic. Some things are not quite clear but it is still an eye openiner. Lots of ponzy runners are still active on the forum, some changed their nicks like pay.btc -> chowyunfat, some simply trying to bury history under disguise of being helpful to noobs like Goat. All that after clearly criminal activity right here on this forum. Unbelievable!
Beware people, this is a den of thieves. Do not get fleeced.
Another epic thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91252.0 started shortly before pirate collapse. It gets really heated in the middle. Nicely shows who is who.
Certainly there has been plenty of scamming and fraud on here, but also lots of helpful people and good information too. As with everything you just need to be careful who you trust.