Wow, just finished reading through this rather long thread...
At some point biggie made a great post summing it all up: This wouldn't have happened if the victims had done a little research early on. Personally, I've never felt comfortable around member democrat given the many negative discussions involving her.
I remember she contacted me via PM in May 2009 after a post I made in the following thread, saying I should contact her if I ever "needed some insight":
http://www.dnforum.com/f31/there-such-thing-thread-356337.html
Funny thing to be offered insight from a new member and (as it seemed to me at least) unexperienced broker. It may have been a nice gesture, but I didn't respond, because I already knew about a few incidents where member democrat was surrounded by problems. You can be unlucky, but if you run into problems repeatedly and as often as democrat has done, there must be something wrong with the way you conduct business.
I have brokered domains on behalf of clients for some years before I scaled back in late 2007. I can sympathize with brokers who are not able to give credentials due to non-disclosure agreements, because I have brokered some nice sales myself which I couldn't disclose due to confidentiality. But if a broker, who clearly states on several occasions that he or she is "experienced", cannot come up with one single sale, that makes me suspicious.
Over the years -- older DNF members will agree with me on this -- you could see many new members come and go. Those who wanted to make it to the top too quickly often made promises they couldn't deliver on; they wanted to deal in the high end of the market without having the necessary experience. This can't go well, unless you're very lucky. The exact same aura of gold rush surrounded democrat most of the time.
I cannot and do not want to judge her being a scammer or not, because I know too little about the issues at hand. But I do think she needs to work on the way she does business. There are usually enough warning signs to tip you off before doing business with a member on DNF you do not know yet. Just do a little research or take your time to form an educated opinion.