First place payment received.

Withdrawals take 3 - 5 business days.

In my experience there isn't really ever one flag that is universal among all scammers as some are way better at it than others. If something just doesn't feel right about the transaction or they rush you to complete, you might just want to back off. Just remember the search function is your friend; there are lots of scammer stories on here to learn from.

I'm a new poster on here but have been interested and following btc since about January last year when I learned about them from my IT guy at work who had started mining. Basically I'm just a dork that is interested in economics / monetary policy and whenever I take an interest in something I try to learn as much as possible about it.

But as Stephen just mentioned look into anyone you do business with; a good chunk are here for the right reasons while others are just here to make a quick buck and bounce ripping people off as they go.

If you are just purchasing moneypak to use in purchasing btc there really isn't much you need to know. With moneypak you just need to go to any participating retailer and purchase grab a moneypak, take it to the cashier and give them the amount you want to load. The retailer usually charges about $4.95 for the moneypak plus whatever you are putting on it. From there, assuming you have a trade lined up, you contact your exhanger and give them the moneypak number. They use the moneypak to either load a pre-paid card of theirs or load their paypal; once transferred they send you the coins to your wallet. But research anyone you are doing business with because they could potentially take your money and send the coins.

If I were in your situation and could not wait for the banks on Monday I would cancel my order and find an exchanger willing to take moneypak in exchange for btc or a redeemable code. If this happened earlier today I would say go with someone that has a cash deposit option like bitinstant to send your btc to mt. gox.

Check out the marketplace, members buy/sell in there but I think you need to get your post count up a little bit to be able to respond out of the newbie section. But you also might get members coming into your post with offers. Just make sure you do a search of them and see what others have said.

Depends on timing, if you need the coins immediately you should try to go through a trusted member on this site and use whatever method that is mutually agreed upon. If you don't care about how long it will take for you to do the bank transfer, go that route. But more than likely the fees involved with the bank transfer of $400 will probably be around the same as what a member would charge which is on average around 5% ($20)

I have coins but I have not developed much of a history on here yet.