Bitcoin Forum

Accounts can be bought/sold here.
Imagine a situation where xyz sells his account to someone then is it possible to recognize that the person behind the account is real xyz or the one who bought it?

Important point to note here is xyz has got fairly good trust score. So, the new person can even misuse the account.

If the person behind the account has not posted an address or something that can be related to them, then it might be pretty hard to tell. However, most of these accounts get recognized after a while.

1st thing that'd tip you off is a changed password, but the "Warning" is only showed for a month
2nd thing, a change in style of writing
3rd , change in use of address.

And many more, you are asking this for "Educational purposes" right?

Is it not possible for the new account user to commit a big scam during this transit period?

Yes, it's for educational purposes only. Its more to protect myself from such account users as I am into the riskiest trade possible using bitcoin.
Change is style of writing: What if I am not even aware about his real style of writing? How would I know that his writing is the same as it used to be?

Is it suggested to ask user to point the BTC address which they posted on the day they joined this forum before making any deal with them?

Anything is possible with the right person. However, as I've said there are a few people that really pay attention to these things.

Have a look at their last posts, if you see a change in their post style it should be enough to warn you.
That, unfortunately doesn't work. Even private keys of staked addresses are sold these days, but asking for a custom signed message(which should be replied fast enough, in an hour I'd say) is another layer of security to know its not sold. But considering the fact that most scammers are just looking for a quick buck, use your common sense and don't deal with reversible method of payment from members, more than what their account costs.

No wonder why so many scams happen on this forum.

1. No rules to access Market Place.
2. No credibility of the account. Anyone can sell their account & other user can scam & run away.
3. Scam section is not moderated.
4. Scammers/Alts are not banned.
5.
6.
7.
8.
............

How do I know the price of the account with which I am dealing rather how is the worth measured of any account?
Whats the worth of let's say your & my account(s) ?

Even if we disallowed account sales, there is no way of preventing them. People could do it on another website. Scam are not moderated because it would be hard for each moderator to decide what is and what isn't truly a scam.

No, thats because its the users who blindly believe anything without doing research of their own.
Accounts are sold, and once in a while a "legit" newbie does come up.
Thats why its you who should be using your brain.
Wait what? Why would you want to moderate that?
It creates a false sense of security "Well scammers are banned, so this user should be "legit"". You have heard about TOR and proxies right?
Anyway, I know you're going to be annoyed by my comment, so
 Peace out!

Make your own estimate, but as for me I'd estimate mine at somewhere around 0.5 but you should only deal with 70-80% the worth of account. Yours, somewhere at 0.02
It depends on trust and rank and sometimes, the devotion you have shown to the forum

Sorry but why would you care if scammer scams on another website? Should we not focus on making https://bitcointalk.org a better/less prone to scam forum?
By banning a/c sales and making user who registered with that a/c responsible for any/all scam that happens with that account would prevent at least 0.01% of the scams?
In most of the cases looking at the evidences it should not be that difficult to decide who scammed.

You missed the point. If account sales are no longer allowed here, it does not mean that accounts are not sold. They will be sold elsewhere, but still used here.


What in your personal opinion is the better way to make this a less prone to scams forum?

One where staff tries the impossible, to prevent all scams or one where each user learns about the way of the scammers and is able to protect themself?

something, something, fish, feed him for a lifetime.


What exactly do you mean with "responsible"? Lets say I sell my account and it is used to steal 1 BTC from you. What now?


Its easy in hindsight, isnt it?

Yep, just like the real world, scammers are abound here and it's even worse because a lot of folks get into bitcoin to make money quickly, so they're greedy and jump at opportunities that seem too good to be true.  And even those that don't sometimes are scams too. 

I imagine the gold rush in California in the 1800s was like this.  Scammers must have flocked there to rip off the gullible.  So just be careful.

Agreed but then knowingly we are not digging holes for ourselves.

Implement proper & effective rules to access market place rather than implementing worthless rule of not having referral link as part of OP.
Staff does not have to do anything if there is a rule to access market place.
For Example: Account less than Junior Member & registered for 30 days should not have access to deal.
It would be an automated process and no staff involvement once this feature is coded.

For anyone to learn how to protect themselves against scams, it need time. They would learn in the 30 days period that how does scammers work & would become more capable of protecting themselves from scam if the above mentioned rule is implemented.


You sell your a/c then it means you no longer want to keep that account.
You should probably create a thread on this forum that you are about to sell your account and you would not be responsible for any deals/scams done after that date using your account.

Agreed because you are always giving your opinion against the topic which I raise.
My thought process is completely opposite than yours.

Yes, its happening in the dark where its difficult to see.


But for a scammer its easy to just farm accounts for 30 days and use them for scams later. They haven an incentive to do this, because they can possible come out ahead, esp. if the majority of users consider Jr. accounts trustworthy. Someone that just wants to make deals might be driven away because they dont bother with the grinding.


Lets just put the above aside and lets assume somehow account sales do not happen. Do you honestly consider someone trustworthy just because they have been here for 30 days? 60 days? 180 days? 770 days? You should not. You should no one here consider trustworthy because of time. If anything you can trust someone because they have something to lose. E.g. I have 770 days I put into this account to lose. What you cant know is how much in BTC that is worth to me. Some escrows and services have shown they can be trusted with 1000's of BTC. How do you know its them? Verify the PGP signed message they provide. Its more beneficial for them to stay honest than it is to run away with 2-3 btc.


People dont read stickies, they ask the same questions - answered in those stickies - over and over and over and over again. There are at least 2-3 posts a week that ask how activity works. Do you honestly think you can just make a marketplace sticky and people will be educated? It does not only need time it also needs a strong motivation and the best motivation is: no one can help you if you fuck up. Bitcoin can not be reversed. If you are willing to take the risk to trade it for paypal that can be reversed for 180 days, be aware of the risk. Once the scam happened your coins are gone and there is nothing you can do about it. This is the strongest motivation I can think of for someone to learn and understand how trading with bitcoin works.


Yes, but you suggested I will be held responsible for the actions of the acount even after I sold it. I ask you how you will be able to make me responsible.

Just ask yourself & analyze the amount of scams happen here which involve newbie dealing with a newbie.
Don't you think if Junior member restriction is applied then scams would reduce?

For me your answers look like as if you have given up and there is no hope to rectify the current situation of this forum.
Shouldn't it be moral responsibility of administration of this forum to control scams here? If not then why do they send note in red for PMs sent by Newbies?

If you have openly created a thread that you sold your a/c then you should not be held responsible for scams.
If you go by my 1st logic: Selling accounts SHOULD NOT be permitted. If you sell your account even on other site then also you are held responsible for anything that happens with this account. Lets say if your account is hacked then forum admin can drop an e-mail to your registered e-mail id & inform you to login ASAP and see what's wrong with the account. Similarly if hacker did any scam using your a/c then you should repay for the losses.

It depends from the style of writing and from many other thing. But I think that an IP control would be great in way to check some man who has more than one account.

They don't have issues with creating multiple accounts on this forum.

not necessarily. it might reduce the number of scam attempts, (ex newbie member, first post saying 'my million dollars papal for your btc you send first'), but imo members that would have gotten scammed by a new account will probably have gotten scammed regardless of weather or not the scammer was using a newbie or junior account. worded kinda badly, hope it made sense.

no, you should be able to look out for yourself and identify a scam and avoid it. how many threads involving trades do you think there are on this thread? you cannot leave the active monitoring and judgement of all of those trades to the two admins of the forum. they have better things to do, better admin-y things. its also not the job of the moderators either. their job is to clean up the forum in terms fo moving posts where they belong, banning spammers, deleting off topic stuff, yada yada. these people arent the police and have no obligation to be.

permitted or not, account trades will happen. its more or less safer for account traders (sellers and buyers likewise) if account trading is allowed and allowed to be taken on the forum. if they were banned, account trades would happen regardless offsite, and multiple problems would arise, not limited to but including repossession scams by the seller, straight up scamming without the presence of escrow, etc. to clarify what i mean by 'repossession scam,' in the event that account trades were forbidden, the forum admins would have no choice but to return the sold (offsite) account to the seller (since account trades are forbidden, the ruling would automatically become 'the account was hacked') potentially abetting the seller in scamming the account buyer out of whatever he paid for the account.

Another mexxer-2.

Why even have moderators on the forum at all? Don't they have better things in the real life to do ?

Illogical arguments at its best given by so called Hero & Legendary members of this forum who think that forum spamming by allowing users to post referral link as part of their OP is bigger issue than innocent users who get scammed here & loose their hard earned money.

you mean another person that uses their brain? ok.

if youre asking this, then you probably dont know what the moderators do. again, theyre not the morals police, theyre moderators.

please point out where my explanation and whoever elses' are illogical. then again...

as soon as you play the sig spam card, its more or less apparent you dont have anything as a rebuttal. im starting to think youre just trolling at this point. well whatever.

Please use your eyes & read properly.
If you cant understand then it's not my moral responsibility to make you understand the difference b/w sig spamming & placing referral link as part of OP being considered as spam on this forum

and you argue with me thinking that you got sound head and using it..such a pity dude...

The difference doesn't matters anymore.There are rules and you need to follow them cause you can't change it until you have found a solution where more than half of the community members agree with it and i don't see that happening.

Yep, I saw that. Priority of this forum administration is to control spam by implementing as many rules & policies as possible BUT not even try to control scam by implementing any rules or policies. No one is coming up with suggestions, all of them are just opposing whatever has been proposed to control scams here.

Funny party: As mentioned by you most of the forum agrees to it.

So I get a mail, how does that hold me responsible for a scam with the account I just sold off-site?

thats what i feell ike doing cause i got rep abused for no reason.

You will have scam accusation thread against YOU.  
In any case, if you have sold the account then you won't care about what's happening with your account BUT if we had this POLICY that accounts can not be sold then YOU would have been held responsible for this & YOUR account should have been banned.

Most of the forum agrees to it because what you say is utter foolishness with no achievements by doing it.People should have the common sense to understand the consequences of their trade/deal whatever.

Now,if we put your question out of the forum then what are governments doing for the ton load of scams ,crimes increasing day by day ? It never ends and the best solution is that the people should take the required precautionary measures.

Yes but what if the guy himself scams after building all the reputation required to do one ?
what after making a scam accusation against him ? does it solves the issue ? No, the scam has already taken place and there is no fruit in banning the scammer/user except the useless satisfaction of the victim.

So you think there are no agencies established that are trying to control scams/money laundering in real world ?
Please read this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering)

what is the outcome after having several agencies for that ? some people need to taste the fire in order to know the consequences and avoid it in the future.You can't help everyone. :-\
Wikipedia is not reliable.

Look at your logic Sir: Wikipedia is not reliable. We should not try to do anything to control scams.
We should read to your comments & wait for people to get scammed here or in real world.

Implementing controls would reduce scams. I never said that implementing controls/rules/policies would stop scams.
Implementing controls is in our hands but preventing scammers from scamming is not. Still, if the controls are implemented then scams would reduce.

Okay first off all,instead of criticizing whats been put up for the rest of us by the forum, tell me how much effort have you taken to control the spam? Why should you care right ? "You're not being paid to do so".Sames goes to admins/staffs, they do have a life outside this forum and they can't waste their 24 hours monitoring the scams around here and obviously they're "not paid" .Why don't you start paying couple of people monthly for reducing the spam? Would you ? No one has personally invited you to join the forum or the internet,its your choice .Since you're here,you must know all the possible trends in the market including scams.For your information,in every thread there is a detailed post glued on "how to be safe" and still if you fall a victim of scam, the admins/staffs are not to be blamed but your stupidity and lack of awareness.As far as the account sales are concerned,we have sell here for Netflix,spotify,Brazzers,etc which cannot be controlled by any of this companies .Similarly,taking off account sales is not going to help anyway .

what makes you think there is no prevention over scams ? many DT members are active most of the time for such reasons.People who ignore the negative rating's and require more help then they should ask for it.
I remember asking sebastianju about a lot things i never understand or which seemed fishy to me while i was a newbie.

How? You just have my mail address.

Yes, in some case it's possible to recognize that someone is using a second account (alt-account) ... see the quickseller story.

You added it later, that's why could not reply to it.
Lets say your family member is murdered brutally by someone. Now tell what would you do?

None of the admin/mod is supposed to spend 24 hours on this forum.
If you read my earlier replies, I am asking for rules/policies to be implemented by coding these features not manual intervention.
Once they're coded then its all automated, there is no moderation required.

If you'll have some self-respect then you would get guilty conscious.
In any case it'll prevent others from being scammed by adopting the same technique.

EDIT: If you are so against my idea of banning account sales then tell me the benefits that you can get by selling it & not making it public?

So your only actualy defense against scammer is the hopes that they will have a guily conscious? Im not convinced.


Your only suggestion in that regard was to prevent newbies from using the marketplace section. You failed to establish how that would reduce the number of scams.

I have not studied law. So, can not think of better arguments to convince you.


How did I fail? Can you tell me whats the account statuses of users involved in scams?
If you are on this forum for lets say 2-3 months then the likeliness/probability of this user being completely unaware of how scammers work reduces to some extent.

What?


You failed as you cant explain why it should be less likely for a Jr. to scam than it would be for a Newbie to scam. The ranks vary obviously. From what I see in the scam accusation thread, the largest chunks are newbies. When newbie are no longer allowed to post in the marketplace section it is my assumption that they would either result to PMs (you might want to restrict that as well?) or just wait until they are Jr. Again having waiting 30 days so not make anyone trustworthy.


No, some to the largest scams have been pulled by established members. E.g. see tradefortress, the user once on default trust, now banned (not for the scam) and with the lowest possible trust score (-9999).

Read that wrong.

What makes you think that is true?

Yes, why not? Instead of showing the Red warning just ban the feature of allowing Newbies to send PMs.
If they want to say something to someone, let it be in open. Anyways, they would not be allowed to trade so they won't be leaking out their payment processor information.

What makes you think that's wrong?

I cannot do anything unless i have some valid evidence bout it. Generally i contact the police and sort that out ,it's possible that the member was not  a good guy and his murder was a good thing ?

Now, do you think that the local forum scams can/should be compared to life and death situations or even to legal issues ? Get things right Kid.

You were the one who brought this topic forward & mixed real life incidents with scams happening on this forum.
Get your concepts/thoughts clear 1st Sir, then comment!

"Leaking out their payment processor information?" What does that mean?

I dont see how it will result in less scams. If anything it will result in no scams by newbies and more scams by Jr. members.


I see high ranked members getting scammed with the easiest schemes.

I didn't compared it to real life ,i explained you how they are unstoppable. Though what was the question for ? You need legal lawsuit to identify alt's ?

It means they don't have to fear about someone trying to access their payment processor a/c as it would be in open on the forum. (Its advised not to give this information in open instead give in via PM)


At least we'll make scammers work hard before they scam here by working on their account & posting something useful on some topics (if its not useful & is spam then its deleted by mod's anyways)


Did I say that implementing rules would stop scams?
Scams would continue to happen even after we implement these restrictions. No matter what you do scams would happen!
Least we can do is try to prevent them.

Implementing these measures does not means that anyone should trust anyone blindly. You still would have to use your head before dealing with anyone & you would still be dealing at your own risk on this forum.
It will just add one extra layer of security & there would less of exit scammers.

No I just showed you how flawed is your thought process.
You don't want scammers to be banned. You don't want any actions to be taken against them. You want people to get scammed by the same person again & again.

You are stating your opinions and i don't expect anything else from a judgmental guy who can do nothing other than labeling/abusing people.

No, because ban is a complete different issue and they deserve it when they go against forum rules (not yours or mine)

The actions against them are pretty solid and consensus already.I don't have a habit to force people to accept my brand of logic (particularly when it is full of bullshit)

If they are lacking common sense and have no motivation towards their own safety then YES. Such people can only learn from punishments/scams/losses and not from advises,bans or anything else.

Please stop posting on my thread. I am done arguing with you.

Better make a self-moderated one next time so that you can delete all the posts which prove you or your mentality wrong  :-\ such a child.

Alright Sir!
You proved yourself to be a grown up adult & me to be child. I am fine with it.

Can you please stop posting on my thread & probably ignore me from your list?

He probably would have, if he could, he mostly makes these crap threads in meta, in which if anyone gives any opinion other than his own, he's told to "Please stop posting on my thread". Meta threads can't be self-moderated, so thats a huge plus. And I see where he is getting all these dumb ideas of banning scammers from, a botting forum , plagued with ref spam and fake trust, called TheBotNet

Different person has different writing style too
Take me for instance, i tend to post with dozens of emoticon :P
So maybe in the future when i don't post with emoticons anymore there's a possibility that this account is sold to someone else :P

You can determine if the account is sold or not by looking at the section they usually making post at
I saw an ID that posted a lot in Indonesian locals and suddenly he swifted to Italian section :P

But the best way to deal with scammers is by using escrow and always lool their trust before doing any transactions ;)

Well at least I am giving some ideas.
You guys do nothing just to oppose.

If you're so against the idea why would you ask a Newbie these questions when he wants to trade?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1302214.msg13344578#msg13344578 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1302214.msg13344578#msg13344578)
and then suggest him to trade with someone else?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1302214.msg13344860#msg13344860 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1302214.msg13344860#msg13344860)

You basically had no intention of trading with this guy but still you wanted to act as moral police and did some inquiry.

You did notice that I saved him from a potential scam from reversible method of payment right? And this?

I'm 90% sure this guy's just trolling, he offers no reasoning to back up his thoughts and sticks to discrediting everyone else's thoughts and suggestions with the following: 'you're stupid, you're spamming, you're wrong because I said so, I'm better than you, etc.'
I've had him ignored since seeing his response to my thoughts, no actual rebuttal, just 'you have a sig so you're wrong.'

So you basically think that he is newbie and he is unaware of how PayPal works?

This means he denied your suggestion of trading with trusted users of this forum who charge 10% when they buy BTC for PayPal instead of giving him 1:1 rate.

That's actually highly likely these days as we've seen an increasing amount of trolls in this section.

I am not doing this. If you really think I am trolling then feel free to delete my post.

Which question of your didn't I answer?
You want scammers to be not banned? How can I convince you that it's wrong?

Your point ?
Anyway, just see how much of a troll you are.

Summary: You do not listen to perfectly reasonable ideas. Anything expect your opinion is invalid even when suggested by many trusted members. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is told to: "Please stop posting on my thread". You're going off-topic on your own thread.
The only reason you're not on my ignore list is , I only add the politics board spammers there.

Is Skrill = PayPal?

What point do you want from me here? He denied your suggestion and that's it.

Do me a favor & kindly ignore me.

You can always tell when someone buys an account. Just look through the post history and it becomes very clear. Typically all the sudden they join a signature campaign and start posting 10 times per day.

Why do you make threads when you are not able to handle other's opinions ?

what ? have you ignored me ? cause i am diehard fan of politics. :-\

2 of these comments were for you when I had already discussed a lot with you. Please check the replies I gave you before I wrote this to you.
3rd one is for mexxer-2 who already knows what I think about him.

Does giving reasons make it right ? people who tend to run away from discussion's are definitely not mature and cannot get to conclusion ever.
when people bring the Ignore button in between it's like they have figured out how weak their discussion or point of view is.

I am not running away. I am here to discuss with people who want to listen instead of attacking me over each and every word I write.

I wish everyone who attacked me on this thread was able to identify that master-p account was sold way back in August or September then today we would not have seen users loosing their BTC in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306301.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306301.0)

It's weird that he sold his account but even if he did he is still a scammer for not notifying people that his account was being sold, it's getting harder and harder to trust any escrow in this forum, very sad. This is why selling accounts should be harder.

Personally I agree 100% with you but others who already have attacked me on this thread should also realize this & then as a community we should raise our concerns to administration of this forum & try to find solution for this.


Basically its impossible to trust anyone in here as you never know who is behind the a/c you are dealing with.

Nope. It should be completely banned & this should be made a rule/policy. So, that we can take legal actions against users like master-p. As of now he did not break any rule/policy of this forum.

^^^^^^^^
If thermos wanted your opinion, he would have asked for it. It's his forum, he do what he want.
Don't like it? Go start your own.
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3rejl9/coinbase_ceo_brian_armstrong_bip_101_is_the_best/cwp6dro

Good idea, lets take the master-P issue as an example. How do you think this could have been prevented even if selling accounts was verboten(!) here? The sale was hidden and it included all commonly used ways to identify someone here, including PGP and bitcoin private keys, as well as a mail address.

^^You want to know what the difference is between providing an effortless, liquid market vs. scammer having to put some effort into his scheme?

@shorena: I guess you got your answer

The efford was done here though. So do I understand you correctly that this is a bad example to discuss because you have no way to prevent this?

Let me rephrase that: You say you have no way to prevent someone that is willing to put in efford in order to scam?

I would like to challenge your IQ now. This question just made me feel sick about you!
Can you please tell me your age?

Are we even discussing at the same level? Did I ever say on this entire thread that taking precautions/implementing rules would mean that nobody would ever get scammed?

On separate note: I myself have been scammed thrice.
Once a person hacked a trusted person's account & used his identity to make me send bitcoin 1st. Though it was just $10.4 worth of bitcoin
2nd time the guy charged back $60 saying it as unauthorized transaction after I sent him BTC
3rd time PayPal fucked me by reversing the $140 to the sender and then that person turns out to be a con artist.

No, its irrelevant.


I guess we have fundamental different views. Your suggested security simulation is just that a simulation. It will not stop any scams, it will just cause more hassle for everyone. Most of your arguments remind me of politicians. IS attack? Ban crypto! Does it help? Who cares, we did something.

Got scammed by a newbie? Limit marketplace to Jr. members! Does it help? Who cares, we did something.

We are among strangers here, act accordingly.

At least I am suggesting something which half the forum would agree with (especially now when master-p fucked us all).
What are you doing other than commenting on my thread & making me explain you because you are too ignorant to understand and/or see anything on your own?

Eating ice cream and disagreeing with you. I dont have have a better solution in order to criticize yours.

Why not just shut down & stop replying to this thread or agree with my points?

Who said so?Also the rest half the forum constitutes of mods/staff/admins so your suggestions really don't matter.


Really ? How much money master p fucked you over for? Mind sharing the txid's? :-\


Unfortunately ,he can't do much but enjoy his ice cream. 8)

It was generic expression Sir.
Luckily "I" have not been scammed by master-p but many others on this forum have been and you can read this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306301.220 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306301.220) to know about them all.

*effort
No. What he's saying is this:
Making it easier for scammers to scam, by letting them buy and sell bitcointalk accounts right here, on bitcointalk, is like making a big sign next to your front door, saying:
Hello burglars!
On a rusty nail below, you'll find the keys to my house. Use them in good health, I won't stop you. Because you'd probably find a way to pick the lock, or kick the door in, so, technically, I can't stop you.
The combo to the wall safe (it's in the basement, behind the gray breaker panel, you would've found it yourself) is 37 right 28 left 16 right. You would have figured it out yourself, it's a shit safe, you can literally hear the tumblers.

Oh, sorry, almost forgot, disable the alarm!!! Keypad behind the coat hanging by the door, code is 1337. So obvious, amirite?

Get it now?

Hey Sardasa. I hope you recognize me :D

I can understand you joined here lately and have several doubts about account sales, trust ratings and all kinds of immoral activities going around here as I had the same doubts when I joined. Check this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=977435.0

I too hated the account sales trend that was going around here but now I'm kind of used to it. Now with escrows too turning scammers, I have lost faith on escrow as well as it was hitting the last nail in the wall. I can clearly state now that one cannot trust anyone on this forum except themselves.

To answer your question, it doesn't matter if the person has sold his account or not as nobody can ever guess it unless you check the seclog where it mentions that the password has been changed/reset. With PGP keys and email accounts also being sold, there else no way left to trust any account here.


I feel the only way to protect this forum is to have VERIFIED escrows (by verified I mean an escrow whose personal details are known to the admins and mods). To become a verified escrow, the person would need to pay a fee to the admin and then only he would be able to escrow transactions here. I don't think this would be implemented though as nobody here ever cares about people getting scammed. Only we are the ones to lose and cry over it. There are too many rules to follow of which none are useful to us.

You just hit the nail on its head :D

Signed messages would work.

These "tells" can easily be circumvented. I guess only Theymos can tell for sure, as he probably has access to all accounts' IPs.

One way is when an account forgets to log out and responds to a thread as a different account, accidentally.
One example was a person, Pov, who I was about to trade with him until he accidentally logged in and responded to his own thread as a scammer, armour.

1) as you said, people can hold their account of a month, then scam.
2) this isn't usually checked, but a person fluent in a language, say English, can replicate a person's writing style.
3) usually when buying accounts, people ask for the private key of an address used to sign an account.

But there's a chance the original owner might had given the private keys to the next owner, allowing him to sign messages...