I've had nothing but exceptionally good experiences with CL, but it definitely is like the wild West there.  You have to be a long-time hobbyist with pretty good instincts and a pretty fair bullshit detector.  Newcomers should beware.

As a general rule, I'm suspicious of anybody who posts a picture there.  There are exceptions, like the wonderful Emma/Alex and some of the Asian massage places are great (although the service is wildly uneven).  But I think a lot of the pictures posted are either fake or posted by agencies pretending otherwise--which is what I suspect is the case w/the young woman who is the subject of this thread.  I also worry with the really young woman--the 18 year-olds, etc.--who look too good to be true that they may be LI stings.

My good experiences have been with providers who require you to e-mail first before they'll send a picture--a small degree of trust is exchanged, a small amount of each other's personality is revealed in the text so you can both judge the seriousness of the other.  You still have to be on your guard, but I've met some really sexy non-pros (or half-pros or whatever) who preferred not to be reviewed.  Ironically, the worst experience I ever had in my life was with someone (I forget her name) who was an occasional CL advertiser--but had very good reviews on TER.

That's not totally true. Maybe it's that way where you are but I have recently picked up five new clients by posting ads there. Craig's list is definetly YMMV.