If you notice, in many of these posts, the phrase "I hope" is incorrectly followed by a comma.

These sorts of obvious English grammar mistakes (as well as incorrect plurals, incorrect phrasing, etc) are the hallmark giveaways of foreign phishing. It is very difficult to not make these little gaffes when you don't know all the myriads of exceptions to English 'axioms': ie "I before E except after C". Virtually every rule the language has, has exceptions, and the exceptions do not have to be logical or intuitive. And that's the downfall of foreign scam artists - no matter how hard they try, there is a good chance there will be a stupid mistake that one would never see on official emails from institutions. I once received a perfect-looking email that in every way mirrored one from a credit card provider, except for a couple glaring mistakes: the wrong placement of a comma, and the pluralization of a noun that doesn't change when pluralized - things you would not see from such an email. I called the bank, and sure enough, the email was a scam. Looked great - even had the workable links. Nowadays, there are programs that get into your email and read the emails in order to learn to not make the hallmark mistakes.

I suspect that this individual may be doing just that, on his own. If his IP traces back to the general area of that article, there you go.

Unfortunately, there are many Americans who know the finer points of English no better than the ones trying to scam, and it is getting easier and easier to dupe.