buying a website legitament or a scam?

So here is my story: I see an ad for a classified ad site that is already making money. $1200 to buy makes around $500 a month with very little work. Sounds great.

Turns out the guy actually lives several provinces over from where I am.
So we have to find away to make the deal. He sends a few pictures of adsense checks and payment jpegs as proof he owns it. I sort of want more proof cause I could make stuff up like this on my photo tools.

I try to get him to get financial statements, sent as well as some id. I would also like a legal document of transfer of ownership. The guy says ok that's not a problem. Then the next day he says that it will cost him $300 to do all this up. He doesn't want to pay a third of his asking price. I have been I left a message for my lawyer.

I try to ask about a notary republic he says to me that it is not even a registered business and I guess he is right most small businesses aren't registered. It can be hell just trying to register a business name never mind the whole business.

Now he wants to do an e transfer. I don't trust the e transfer, I want to do paypal-he did say there was multiple ways we could do the payment if we are in different cities in his classified ad. He says he has problems with paypal, that they can be difficult sometimes but sure we can do it.
sent a payment he said his account got frozen.

I read up and I guess this is more common then I thought even though I have never had it happen to me. Paypal says Oh we just need to ask him a few simple questions cause we noticed a few things on his account we had concerns with. I'm like ok. So I hear unless you have been really bad the freeze accounts usually a max of 6 months, so take precautions if you have a big launch I guess. Anyways he says they tell him its frozen for life because he created a previous paypal account along time ago that he forgot the username or password to or something.

He is moving to Ottawa so he'll get his gf to put in on her paypal and we'll do an ebay. Great I think. but then she doesn't have a credit card so she can't create an ebay seller account. So we are just going to do it on her paypal account and I'll call tell them we are doing this so hopefully they won't freeze the account.

Then my lawyer gets back to me, says all this moving around not being able to make payments sounds like a scam. I'm a little mad, well it isn't like he keeps trying to do an e transfer or anything. So we send the money their account gets frozen again. Call paypal they say oh we froze it cause we need to confirm that they sent you the goods first. Okay I tell them about it, they say ok tell them to release it. well sure but aren't you going to send it?

they think that it would be stupid for them to give up the transfer first, even though if I don't give the money Paypal would just give it to them if I accept the website. He says no I want to do an e transfer. but I've called the e transfer people and they say don't do it. That if you don't really know and trust this person that it never ends up good.

so lets recap he is okay with me releasing the paypal money first or an e transfer. I tell him well even if I don't want to pay you paypal will slap my account and take it anyways if I accept the website. He says now that its not about that, that he moved to Ottawa and he needs the money to pay now for his new house or whatever. I say fine how about I send you $2 in paypal release that and show you that paypal won't hold your money. He says no.

I also suggested escrow which he said was a scam site and flippa which he didn't want to do cause it would it would take 20% commissions.

I suggested raising the price to cover the loss. he said

"Pass on any websites I don't know about like I said take the hold off release it half that's my final offer if you don't wana do etransfers I'm not getting involved in escrow or sites I don't know about."

To try to be fair and see it from his side it is getting pretty exhausting after a lil over a week of negotiation.

But still.

Also He said he owned it for 3 years but whois said it was only created 3 months ago, I sort of dismissed it cause his classified ad site showed a fair number of users + it was in the top 5 million on Alexa and that might not sound like much but keeping in mind there is somewhere around around 17-18 billion sites.

Also his email was like this hisfirstname.hislastname77@gmail.com
the girls was herfirstname.herlastname77@gmail.com not actual email names, maybe I should just expose them here I think it is a pretty obvious scam. but both 77@gmail weird what are the odds? It seems like the girls email was made up. I heard a girl in the background talking to him on the phone.

but as of yet he is only willing to accept money that he could potentially run off with it. My family and my lawyer all think he is scamming me and so do I if they only want to take money upfront that you can't get back if they run off with it, it probably is a scam. I really am not going to do an e transfer unless I know I won't want it back or I already got something from it.

Anyone have anything like this? Anyone meet someone with a site for sale and it actually worked out even though you were both in other cities? I almost went to him but even that would cost me a minimum of $400 without food or hotel fees and my time and I might not meet up with anybody or a total psycho at this point so I was like mmm I don't know.

So anyone have anything like this? Anyone meet someone with a site for sale and it actually worked out?