If law enforcement worked as efficiently I'm pretty sure nobody would have the balls to pull a quick one like this anymore. I saw that the thread was started less than 48hours ago and now cue is recovered??? Wow!
I also don't believe the scammer should be let off the hook. Infact he should be hung at the village gate to ward of future evils...it's a metaphor but you get the drift. From what I'm reading this scammer isn't doing it out of one bad judgement, he's a perpetual scammer and he's been at it for a while. He needs to be in the system for what he's done. This man definitely doesn't deserve a clean slate.
If he'd took your cue and ran that's one thing but he deliberately shipped you something else to buy time. He's got a lot of time to think about it all the way till he decided to ship that fake parcel, that's planning.
Me being an overseas AZer can only imagine if it happened to me I'll be totally helpless and would have to write off my lose just like that...wouldn't be fair...then again I'll probably spend some money to fly there just for the sake of getting back even if it cost more..it'll piss me off too much to be able to sleep at night.