Impersonating isn't new on the forum. Scammers impersonate the popular user's username. For me, I don't believe anyone if send PM from any other source like Telegram before confirming via forum PM. But sadly, a few newbies don't know about such as scam attempts and eventually, they lost money. I have a similar case on Telegram where a scammer pretending me, even some of my clients lost funds. A better practice is, please add a note somewhere in your profile regarding this impersonator, so if someone visits your profile then they would notice this. At least a few users would learn from your profile.
I figure the I DO NOT TRADE on Telegram or Skype or Discord text below my avatar and the link for my website that points back to this post is good.
Beyond that there is not much we can really do. Can't stop all the scammers. Can at least try to slow them down.
If they try to scam anyone else and I hear about it, I'll post here.
-Dave