It's also a more poignant tale of a small, community where (thanks, Internet!) international grifters could nonetheless inject themselves.

Or, more cynically, this guy was destined to be scammed and the internet in short order put him to the test. One has to think though that if it were a local scammer we would not be talking tens of millions of dollars.

Its interesting to think about it this way. Like, this community's "financial opsec" was their isolation from the rest of the world. No one on the outside can attack them if no one can even point out the town on the map. The internet makes that approach impossible.