OK, I have taken action against the five spammers, they were all alts of a single person.
The main issue is new members are able to post on other member profiles AND send direct messages to other members without having made a single forum post.
(which is REALLY disappointing - because the reason I set it that way was to help encourage new members to reach out to other members, not SPAM them!!)
I will reluctantly have to change this so new members will only be able to use those features after they prove themselves with a few forum posts...
Regarding staff...
I am really conservative with recruiting staff for various reasons. The main reasons are burnout and then going MIA. It's not a fun job and can get tedious when you're volunteering your free time to deal with clean-up and member conflicts.
At this stage we're still a rather small community. But I will consider recruiting one moderator again - due to the time zone issue. But such a moderator would have to have existing experience.