Interesting story - I wonder how they managed to manipulate the Paypal account of the victim. Clearly Paypal has a problem there.

But the other issue is that of general lawlessness and the fact that this scammer will get away with the attempted scamming, and probably do it to other people, too. For every person like the OP who manage, somehow, to protect themselves, there are 1000 others who don't. And there is the issue that the scammer broke the law, in their state and in the victims state, and probably federally, and yet there will be no action from law-enforcement. In such an environment, why not go into this kind of business? What's the downside? It seems to me that there isn't any downside. Sort of like committing perjury.

In general, how bad does it have to get before the law gets enforced?