I could be wrong but I think having escrow in place was part of the plan that gave the project an air of respectability or trustworthiness.
Obviously, that's why anyone offers to use escrow.
It claims to have "Payment escrowed", which is a lie:
As a campaign manager to guarantee your payment I am holding 0.0984 btc (≈ $2,000)
I suppose much of the problem we have seen is due to relying heavily on forum income. That's why he didn't have a cooling-off period after Bitlucy.
I got the same impression.
I generally recommend to anyone that they have a lot of life outside the forum, and especially that most of their income comes from non-forum sources.
That's easy if you live in a country with high wages, but in many countries
the average salary is less than you can earn from a Bitcointalk signature campaign.