Umm, doesn't gunpoint me the gun is pointed at you?? How can this be when the gun was in the car?

I can see a few ways;

First of all, anyone who waves anound a gun openly will generally have the cops called at them. Therefore you dont openly wave it around. instead what you do is have it back with the driver of the car (your getaway as you will generally rob and run) when the people who are in the process of transacting the "payment" get their wallet out, and you hand over a "box" you then take their wallet and make threats and point to the car with the gunman who has taken aim on the victim.

Then again, they got caught, so i doubt they would have thought that much about it.. unless they silenced their victims surely they knew the same scam would deffinately be noticed if repeated? Someone would file credit card losses under theft and report to the police how it happened etc. police look at craigslist and match the IP of the poster and request a warrant for their ISP to let them know who was on that IP at the time of the listing, and therefore know their address.

Given the fact that we know they were caught, we can assume they would have used a very weak or no proxy at all and possibly no proxy at all, possibly at best used a local computer (council computer) to post it. they then wait for a posting who posted from an IP in a similar location geographically, posted that they wanted to buy back to that request and seen how it went.

Of course its all speculation, but speculation is fun :)