The main tl;dr on the article should be something along the lines of: "Although many claims have been made and some claims continue to be made, none of the claims has ever been replicated reliably despite a very great deal of effort. There are also no good theoretical explanations for how cold fusion could be physically possible. Thus mainstream science does not currently think that cold fusion exists, and [assuming this part is true, is it and can you provide citations?] there have been several known scams aimed at extracting money from venture capitalists [or whatever alleged scam has been observed to occur]." The goal here is to quickly and accurately convey the current state of evidence, mainstream repute, and if there are scams in the wild, warn people against them in a credible fashion. Credible, in this case, means specific and documentable - calling something a scam isn't going to successfully warn off somebody who's paying money; being specific about a past scam and providing a footnote might.

Also note the ordering: First we mention the failure to reproduce experimental evidence, then the lack of theoretical backing, then that mainstream scientists don't believe in it, only then that scams have occurred(?). This ordering is important: rearranging these sentences would be bad. Strong replicated experiemental evidence beats theoretical difficulties. Then, it is not at all uncommon that a bunch of scientists say one thing even though the formal theory is pointing in another direction, so I don't want to hear about the opinion of some 'distinguished but elderly scientists' before I know what the actual numbers have to say. Finally, pointing out that some foolish people are being scammed is very weak evidence about a factual question before I know what credentialed scientists have to say about it. There are known scams that use the word 'quantum', but that is not evidence against quantum physics, just tarring something by association with bad people. There are bad and stupid people everywhere so their presence in association with a widespread concept is not good Bayesian evidence (it is almost equally likely to occur in worlds where the main theory is true as where it is false). So if you want to be convincing for sane reasons rather than bullying the reader into agreement, first you talk about the state of evidence, then you talk about the background theories and their analysis, then you cite mainstream scientific opinion. Then you show what bad things have happened to people who believe this and mock the scams so as to establish that this is a low-prestige idea and believing in it will make your friends think you're stupid, i.e. you shouldn't just do it for a bit of fun cheap irrationality - I do agree that this part is important but you can't do it first and maintain any claim to being a good guy.

The tl;dr overview can with some reasonableness describe all of these points quickly and at once at the top of the article, so it's not like you have to wait to tell people.