As soon as this lady showed up 30 minutes late at the QT and said to go to her house where her husband was, that would have been a big red flag to me to bail out and look for a car somewhere else. The husband could have driven the car to the QT. That was a classic set-up and trouble waiting to happen. Based on the facts presented in the article, these people sounded a little naive and not street smart to me.
I tried selling some appraised high end jewelry for a relative on CL a couple years back.
In the ad, I put specifically meet at a bank during regular hours among other sensible precautions.
One response was a poorly spelled question if they could come to my home in the evening. No response to that one.
Another one I got was more interesting. It sounded like a serviceman (young) but suspicious all the same. The english was just a little off to me. Anyway I responded with the usual canned response and asked about setting up a time to meet.
The responses I got back were very broken english with the guy(s) saying he was in the Marines in California and his chief wouldn’t let him go and it got stranger from there.
Of course I got a nigerian one with the offer of overpaying for my trouble and mailing them off.
The jewelry is still under lock and key somewhere at that person’s home.