Most elaborate scam ever if it were a scam.  Amazing how there are now third party reviewers making videos of the hardware units actually working.  Are they in on it as well?

Ridiculous.  There's no scam here.  You can get a refund for your order at any time if you aren't willing to wait it out. 

Use Dwolla.  The fee is like 25 cents.  They just do an standard debit from your checking account, which takes about three days.  Then you transfer to MTGox.  MTGox takes another 24-48 hours to apply the transfer because it's a manual process for them.  If they automated this, it would be instant I think.  Yes, you have to get verified on Dwolla, but if you're verified on MTGox the process is similar.

I move BTC to MTGox, sell for USD, then move to Dwolla and withdraw.

However, if you don't have accounts on MTGox and Dwolla it will take you some time to get verified.

They've only sent out a couple to reviewers according to Jody at BFL.

There is no official count on the number of PAID orders.  That said, many orders likely have multiple units purchased, so it's impossible to say.  If I were to guess, I'd say around 20,000 units.  Which is about as good as anyone else's guess.

One thing to keep in mind, especially with the Jalapeno's is that many owners will quickly resell their units on the used market after a short time when they realize that it's not a money printing machine, and to recoup their investment from people who are eager to join in the ASIC "Gold Rush" and aren't aware that they'll make $1 a day as the difficulty skyrockets.  Before too long, since these items are not multipurpose like a graphic card, you will find these selling for pennies on the dollar because they'll be effectively useless.

  The biggest problem I could see happening would be that the exchanges used to convert USD into BTC and back would no longer be able to connect to banks and therefor limit your ability to transfer funds easily.  (Not that they make it that easy now.)  Paypal had similar problems to this in the early days and were literally shut out of some states like Louisiana (If I recall, been awhile) and so could not operate there with their banks. 

The biggest reason for this happening would be money laundering.  And likely rogue Governments.  Imagine, for instance, that North Korea got involved with Bitcoin and were using it to circumvent UN restrictions on their financial accounts.  The U.S. would notify banks to stop working with X number of exchanges to prevent cash from moving between states. 

There will always be workarounds.  Someone could sell you a BTC via Craigslist or similar and you could avoid the bank.  But this is not going to help Bitcoin become adopted by the masses, which is what is needed to increase its value. 

Ultimately, if the U.S. gets involved, Bitcoin would survive, but it would be difficult to transfer money to and from.  At least for the U.S.