This is not only an issue with the forum administration/staff, it is an issue with people pretending to be anyone who is potentially owed money. People frequently send PM's from imposter accounts pretending to be from someone who is selling some item.
This could be more easily solved by preventing anyone from sending a PM until they make at least one post somewhere; this would give people more of an opportunity to spot imposters and give them negative trust feedback accordingly.
As I've mentioned before this isn't exactly foolproof and they'll just make the post in some obscure sub to try avoid detection. I don't think we should add this restriction just to stop the minutely tiny amount of people who try imposter scam. Their stupid names are usually the biggest giveaway anyway.
Pretty good idea Cyrus , I really like it .
Developpers could simply make each user group have it's own name color . Let's say Administrators Purple , Moderators Green , Staff Blue etc ..; that could solve the problem .
~ Madness
But most newbies won't be aware of the colour scheme/this feature so I'm not sure how useful it will be. Also, people impersonating staff is very rare and them successful scamming from it is either rarer.