weelll.. yr  choice,, but answer all questions
you'll not be the first that have offered equity in return for development
all new website are unique ad have potentials
however if 15 spammers scare you
how would react to 2000 (true story) spammer profiles on 2 days ?

Disable "user account validation via email" plugin also..

I don't think anyone should wait with solving spam problems until they are 'scared'. Perhaps that was the mistake of the 'brave' soul who let the problem grow to a '1.000 spam profiles a day' problem.

I'm obviously looking for a dev. that thinks my ideas are worth working on.

Temporary disable validation via Email.. Validate account by admin...

that was a joke (but e.g. is my real life client) ->
and spammers did that damage over a *random 2 days only !
total time to resolve = 5 minutes !;-P ohh lolz..
and not was a moodle site not elgg !

Thanks saurabh, and also a thank you to both Matt and DhrupDeScoop.

I have had no spam profiles in the last 12 hours, but 2 profiles managed to sign up after I turned off the ability to sign up, and that puzzled me a bit?!?

I'm gonna try and turn off email validation like saurabh is suggesting. If I can make the spam stop totally, then I'm slowly going to switch things back on.

It seems spam bots hook on to your site and 'call the others' as soon as they are successful once? I'm curious to see if it will have any effect to shut signups down for a few days.