what? no. not even his fake alt nic was enthusiastic, the alt account was just trying to spur a sale. legit, established peeps giving opinions on pricing is not 'vouching' for someone
how could someone be in 'good esteem' with 46 posts over 4 years, with a break between of 4 years before he came back to sling his supposed site for sale
I've written this before when someone got scammed, can't begin to recall even what year I posted it so will just repeat. before buying anything from someone online, do the following:
1. check post history. that's super easy to do by clicking on their username and then selecting 'Find More Posts by xxxx'
2. never pay a stranger to you completely up front. I think half and half is fair, AFTER doing due diligence
even the first time I hired someone to do some coding for me, whom I had an on-board long term connection with, HE was the one who suggested 50% up front, 50% at the end
he also sent me links to his LinkedIn and fb and several refs from people he worked with. without me even asking
3. be careful with those who direct you to pay via anon, non-refundable methods or press a hard sell
I'm guessing his xpreggo incarnation wrote something along the lines of "well, I've got a whole bunch of prospective buyers, so you gotta decide quickly"
a dude who got banned here for being a scammer wanted 1k to help me with a reinstall and update of a wp site (my coder doesn't do wp) and of course, via crypto
I politely declined and received a message back along the lines of "well, good luck when you lose everything"
I figured it out in an hour or so. he got banned for scamming a few months later
4. be careful of people who do not use a domain email when it comes to links or site sales. buy and sell here has some peeps trying to sell links on sites they don't even own
5.
check post history in case point #1 wasn't enough. esp if they're mainly down in the buy and sell section. contact the peeps the member supposedly did deals with who are legit members (probs a lot of the so called 'great transaction!' stuff down there with unknowns is just the same dude with multiple accounts)
I'm not blaming you for what happened, you went into the transaction in good faith and got burned. that's wrong and unfair and someone stole from you
just next time, do your due diligence
good luck with your own wls
