People who have been scammed like this on Airbnb: did you a book a well-reviewed place? As a precaution, I only stay in places with at least ~50 happy, realistic reviews. I've stayed in maybe a dozen such places and never run into anything worse than slightly unclear arrival instructions.

I'm not saying Airbnb is great, but I'm curious as to what these eventual scams looked like at the outset.

I suppose it's possible for someone to maintain a legitimate place to accumulate good reviews and then scam some fraction of people, but the existence of the legitimate place is still a nontrivial hurdle for a scammer.

Maybe I overestimate how hard it is to get 50 good reviews.