Sucks that it was a scam and the rescues time had been wasted looking into it, but you did the right thing! If it were real the puppies could have been in serious trouble and contacting a reputable rescue could have saved them. But thank heavens it wasn't real! I've been hearing enough bad things about Akita's lately, it burns me up when I see more irresponsibly bred pups pumped out to an unsuspecting public.
We also tend to get a lot of spam pet posting, we usually don't have more than a few dog postings a day (and many are repeats/reposts), so they just love to hit up our section with purebred puppies and kittens, take stock photo's from Google or other peoples images off other add websites, type up some good points about the pets, breed info, then to contact them by email asap to reserve one. They usually end up being the "send me money and I'll ship it to you" scams.