In my country, the Government has negative impressions about Bitcoin  that is why they refused to legalized it. Maybe, this "scam" issues turned the Bitcoin image so bad.
However, as a whole I believe that everything pertaining to money can be used by criminals to do bad especially this time where we experienced too much economic crisis. Even in fiat or physical money, not just Bitcoin alone, when the scammers strikes, we can absolutely do nothing.
In connection with the question, I think the best way to avoid this incident is to be very careful in storing bitcoins in our digital wallets. We need to secure it properly and don't ever engage to some website or people that was offering something that is too good to be true.