I had experience with this kind of employers in my very young days, when time and time again 'probably something wrong with the bank' or dozen of other bs excuses.

If you are inexperienced, very short on money (e.g. a student), and have no one to discuss these issues with, rationality might go out of the window. You can convince yourself that everything will be fine very soon, you will get your money next week, etc. So it's not very surprising. Quote from the original Medium post:

We had 8 young Chinese employees on H-1B visas with us as developers, limited in experience but eager to please and learn. They end up being the ones to suffer the most.

https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-got-scammed-by-a-silicon-...