All the warnings in the world wouldn't reduce the liability one bit. The liability is that the buyers (donors) are unhappy for any reason and charge back the payments. If it turns out the fundraiser was a scam and that's outted publicly, all those donors may well do just that.
The OP's story says they got "thousands of $2 payments". Let's say 3000. PayPal could, potentially, see $6000 in chargebacks, $900 in transaction fees, and $45000 ($15 * 3000) in chargeback fees assessed by the card-issuers.
If the fundraiser disappears or doesn't have a spare $45000 sitting around PayPal is on the hook for that.
They're not going to file 3000 court cases to recover it, no matter what warnings were on the site.