Question to/about "popular" Steam & TF2 traders

Indeed. Some of the scammers won't even have many games on the account, since they use an alternate account when scamming.

Pretty much. And because retards who get scammed will rail at the real person about how much of a scammer they are.

editing the numbers to match what the scam account has won't work because people need the profile page to match as closely as possible, so that if they link you to the real ST profile and you click on the steam profile from there you can't tell the difference.

Still, if it's a question on the value and, for lack of a better term, "believe-ability" of the account, all it would take is a guy with a reasonable amount of hours, let's say, 700+, to copy the profile description of the popular trader and take away those 300 or so hours. It doesn't cost that much at all to build up a healthy supply of badges either.

I'm glad that the assholes that do these kinds of things aren't particularly bright - but you've got a good point there that is reasonable enough - if anything else, it does serve as a reminder to go beyond simply looking at their profile.

Exactly, some traders have private profiles, and that is sometimes fine, but if they list on their trading ad all this information, and then they won't let you see it, or it doesn't match up, they're obviously not who they claim to be.

"Because it's a reminder to make the obvious checks"

That's the best way to sum it up! If people were smart enough to do these obvious checks in the first place, then the impersonators wouldn't be successful!