[BirdOPrey5]

If I asked the other side I seriously doubt they will admit to taking the money and running. Even when I've had people PM me "their side" in the past and they claim to have had someone run off with their money I've had the other guy PMing me too claiming they did not run off the customer was just not happy...

Point is I have no way of knowing who is being truthful. No one here does.

It is the BUYERS RESPONSIBILITY to make sure they are hiring someone trustworthy. Even better is - Never give money upfront! If you don't pay until you have something you can see you will never get scammed.

And for every story you can tell me about someone who was given money and "ran off" with it there is someone on the other side telling me someone hired them to do a project, they agreed on a price and a timeline, and when the coder completed the project the buyer stopped returning his emails and basically stole "time" from the coder.

The risk goes both ways. The buyer needs to trust the seller and the seller needs to trust the buyer.

The Paid Requests forums exist here as a courtesy and in my opinion are of last resort. There are dedicated sites like freelancer.com where buyers and sellers are vetted far better than they ever will be here. There are other forums that take an active part in tracking buying and selling- they have the resources to do so, we do not.