Just wanted to affirm what you said about the scammers running a misinformation campaign against you. It is a good thing. A very good thing and hopefully it leads to their demise.
If the only complaint that some people have about what you're doing is that it clutters up their post, or that it is akin to spam, you can also count that as a win.
It would be great if there was some kind of banner alert or some kind of link that popped up at login so that people could see it the moment they come on. Seems like something a dev would have to implement, though.
If the only other complaint is that "only newbies would fall for that" well, that's okay, too, because there's different levels of newbies here. How can you, as you say, distinguish between who's susceptible and who's not? And i if the prevailing thought is it's the newbies who fall for it, the scammers know that, too.
Until some better alternative comes along, keep up the good work. :)