[saulpw]

If you look at their early commit history, "Jia Tan" was always a devious actor.

It's easy to think that they would just have made a video call, but it is a lot harder to lie convincingly over sync videochat than over async text. And a lot harder still to lie in person, and esp over multiple meetings.

Not to say it's impossible, people get scammed in person all the time! But it raises the bar, for sure.