This totally makes sense. "Pretty" websites take much longer and are much more expensive to make. If you're putting lots of time and money into a website, odds are way better that it isn't a scam. There are VERY few scam sites that don't look like a scam site with poor english or terrible stock photography.

I wonder how mass crowd sourcing of designs such as through 99designs, and even places like odesk where design can come very cheap, will affect this.

We've also seen an increase in aesthetic appeal of "themes for Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal which is bringing down the cost of looking nice.

Now that everyone's just gotten used to "pretty" meaning "genuine", I wonder how long it will take for all the s(p|c)ammers to catch up.