I've been following this forum for a few hours today as well as the first day of the first video/code and trying to figure things out as well. Decided to make an account here to see if I can help at all.
Just wanting to point out that the PSA was posted by a "Eve Reign". Google turns up no noteworthy people with such a name, and facebook and myspace return little results, none of them residing in Maryland either.
So, thinking this may be part of the clue, if you remove the letters in "Eve Reign" from "Cheeping River", you are left with CIPHER. I would say this is a legit clue. Sorry, Spitfire.
Edit* - Also, if you take a look at the code, there are specific patterns. It's not like someone slammed their head onto the keyboard to throw us off. No one would put this much thought into a fake lead.