You're right about that, but there's only so much we can do.  Scammers are gonna scam, victims are gonna be victimized.  I'm not trying to downplay it, it's a sucky situation. 

I know you've campaigned for a welcome page that will attempt to warn newbies about the proliferation of scammers on this site, and it's a noble effort on your part.  It certainly couldn't hurt, but I don't think it'll solve much.  Here's a situation where it appears that the victim didn't even register an account on the forum before getting scammed.  The victim ignored the scammers flags and negative reviews.  All those flags and tags did nothing to prevent that scam.  Had the victim registered for an account and seen a scary warning message, would we have had any different of an outcome?  I reckon it would have likely been ignored just like the other warnings.

There are many out there who's greed will overcome their skepticism.  There's absolutely nothing we can do to prevent them from being scammed, and unfortunately those are ones scammers are banking on.