Would have been a huge waste of money.
In all likelihood the new owner would want the account to engage in some sort of massive scam; however, it would never work as philipma1957's writing style is inimitable. Also, most of us know he's not the type to launch some kind of project where he's asking for money from the Bitcointalk community. So the account would have been tagged in a matter of days. Same goes even if he was just joining a signature campaign. Additionally, I could come up with a few questions only the real philipma would know the answer to.
Even if he was just trying to do private deals via PM, it would be really hard to scam more than $10k before getting caught.
You are right to and extent but it will be nearly impossible for the person, who will buy mainly for scam, not to succeed. Do you realise that we are talking about the most recognised account in the forum? If he creates a thread asking for a loan, it will not take must inquiry from.people to offer him loan because he is a known person here. Although people will only worrying about the writing style and some minor things since that may probably be the first time he is making such request in the forum. Nevertheless, I still believe the scammers would have made profits from that deal one way or the other leveraging on the reputation behind that account.