It's not really anything new, and several websites warn against it, here in the US and on foreign sites too.
For example, here is the warning on bedpage you'll see on every ad:
"Warning!!!!
We do not call or text anyone. Spammers can ask for upfront money by claiming that they are the shareholder of bedpage. Kindly ignore such messages.
If anyone ask you to deposit upfront money by Gift Card, Cash app, Venmo, Zelle app, bitcoin or by any other way. Don’t make any deposit. They can be scammers. They will take your money and will never respond your messages. If someone ask you to come to any other website out of bedpage.com and ask you to signup with your credit or debit card, don’t do that as well because they can also store your Card details to make unauthorized payments. Try to stay away from such scammers.
bedpage won’t be responsible for any fraud if you ignore this warning."
It's good to see websites taking responsibilities in posting these warnings, because the fact that I can recall seeing and responding to several posts about this subject indicates that it's not widespread knowledge yet.