What is the point of a spam bot ad on craigslist?

Money.

That is a hilarious slip-up.
Conceivably they could be a lead-in to larger scams; if the spammer gets a bite, he could lead the person on for awhile, and then maybe ask them to send money (or, god-forbid, credit card info) for a “meet-up” or something similar. But that would require a lot of work on the part of the spammer for an effective follow-though, so it seems more likely that your original guess is correct, that they’re looking for email addresses to spam. That, or they are hoping to trick responders into revealing personal information that could be used to steal their identity.

Yeah that happened to a less informed friend of mine a while ago… she tried to cash a “paycheck” that she got before the job even began… the bank said that the account did not exist and that it was as scam. A short time later my friend started to get threatening phone calls and texts stating that if she did not return her money in full then legal action would be taken… it was all just to get my friends bank account info!!!!!!! SCAM!!! crazy the things that go on these days… especially in a freakin economic recession!!

Traffic & affiliate links money. Haha its the mother reason of all spamming bots. I have a PHPBB3 forum & you can not count how many of these hit it per day.