This does sound like it could be the case, and if/when I get back into the scott2k account then I hopefully will be able to discover that once and for all... and of course if it is the case then I will apologize to Og for publicly insinuating that he is possibly involved in the scam (as I did a few times here, but the posts may have gotten deleted).
I am still rather upset that he as the expert professional who I paid and hired for the job... didn't provide me any sort of advice or do anything to make it even remotely difficult for the scammer to accomplish this. That is what bothers me. It shows a complete lack of caring or desire to actually do a good job. Especially with a large sum of money like that. Just willy nilly'd it away.
I have reviewed several cases similar - being granted access to all involved parties dm's - even when some were deleted by one of the involved parties (if one side is deleted but the other side kept it, then they are still there) and what is the same each time is this:
1. person being scammed receives a dm with a link that appears to be a thread in the forums
2. user receiving the dm clicks the link - gets a page that "looks" like forums and requires them to re-log in
3. at this point user has just given their pw to the scammer
4. scammer agrees to use escrow
5. scammer sends message from hacked account to escrow to release funds
6. scammer gets paid
7. user gets nothing
8. escrow gets blamed
This is not the fault of the escrow. maybe it could be solved if the escrows require a signed message from the buyer before releasing funds - for the scammer to do that would require that they also compromised the buyers private keys.
The problem here is that many users sadly use exchange accounts or dont know how to sign a message.