Blooming and Scams

These blossoming trees really gave me a lift today as I was walking to the library (that's Olin there). Things are going well, just going all six cylinders. Terry took off today with a carload of stuff; my bookshelves and closet are quite bare, and my yarn stash is mostly back in VA as well. I'm trying to find a subletter, and almost got caught in a nasty scam. Two people answered my ad on c.raigslist, sounded very nice, responsible, etc. etc. Curiously, both said they were writing from the UK and both asked if they could pay by money order. I said fine, and then went online to find out what a money order actually is (I've never used one before, but a lot of people I know use them to send money home to Latin America). One thing I learned is that a common scam is to offer to send someone a money order and then ask for cash back, only their money order is bogus to begin with, so you end up sending them a bunch of money for nothing. I made a "note to self" in my mind and then went on trying to figure out which of the two Brits to sublet the apartment to. Well! Today I got e-mails from both, each one with a different story that had one thing in common: needing cash back on the money order.
My first thought was, "I can't do that, I'm leaving the country and I won't have time."
My second thought was, "Waaaaaait a minute... didn't I just read something about cash back scams?"
My third thought was, "Those mean people!"
(Mean people suck!)
I wrote back to both and said I can't deal with a cash-back situation and am planning to sublet to somebody local instead. (Hope I find somebody!)
Anyway, all day long I'd keep remembering odd little details about both e-mails, just little things that didn't register at the time, but looking back I'm realizing they were very odd. For instance, both asked a number of questions about the apartment (normal) but they were asking about things that were listed in the ad...(alarm bells!)
I wonder whether I would have been less suspicious if there had only been one?