Thanks for the heads up. It's really ashame that you have to be wary of EVERYBODY when you travel (because 90% of them are just being friendly), but this story drives home the need for vigilence.

FWIW, I fell for the "art student scam" about a dozen years ago (see, it's a time-tested approach!) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. We were walking to some museum and ran into a "helpful" student was in perfect English told us the museum was closed that day. We got to talking (it was rare at that time for locals to speak good English) and after awhile he said his art class was putting on an exhibition in a nearby gallery. "Would we like to see it?" Well, why not, we had no immediate plans since the museum fell through! Of course, we wound up purchasing a couple of batik paintings, maybe spending a grand total of $40 (not a big scam in the scheme of things).

The next day we realized it was all a scam because we found out the museum was not closed! We felt so mad at ourselves for being conned that for a decade we stuck the paintings in a draw and tried to forget the matter.

The funny thing is that a couple of years ago, we found the paintings and, well, still liked them a lot. So we had one framed and displayed. I guess time heals old wounds.