OP should be careful on Reddit of people who may claim to be locals just to gain trust. There are still lots of scammers there.
Yup. Sadly, many crypto communities I've been in is infested with scammers lol e.g. those at reddit, twitter, tg, discord. I'm glad it is less crazy in bitcointalk lol.
My advise it to not entertain DMs from randoms and just keep the discussion in public-- start a thread. This way, someone slippin' a scam trick will most likely be downvoted to oblivion and/or will be called out.