Even in-person deals mean nothing, people should always remember what happened to Burtw,
1,
2, especially the part about asking to hand over his account to them.
the issue of undercover agents infiltrating the american p2p market is indeed troubling and is the single biggest danger to p2p traders IMO. so many people are ignorant of the law so they hand their cases to the feds on a silver platter. i've been researching the legal issues surrounding p2p bitcoin exchange quite a bit:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5308020.....and there is a crucial element to @BurtW's case which can't be ignored. he says it himself, and it's as true today as it was in 2017:
If I had never advertised on localbitcoins they would have never been able to claim what I was doing was a business and they would not have been able to arrest me for running a business without the proper license.
i quite like bitcoins for cash, no ID with a burner phone for contact.
as long as you're on the right side of the law. because there are definitely cops on LBC trying to trick you into breaking it.