Firstly, £1.5k per week is a decent wage for an SPL team outwith the current top 6. In other words, the Pars are continuing to pay some of their players decent SPL wages. Not sustainable in their position.
Its highly unlikely that the usual suspects (Killie, St Mirren, Hamilton, Falkirk, St Johnstone, Dundee etc) won't know about this level of player. If one club knows about an available player you can rest assured the rest will as well. I would think it'll be unlikely that we'll sign anyone in the summer that the others aren't aware of. There are exceptions of course.
Players like Scott MacDonald, Richie Foran, although unknown to you or I before coming to us were well known to the other clubs. These days agents will send out blanket mailshots to virtually every similar club in Britain, or perhaps further afield.
Teams as diverse as Crewe, Grimsby, Wrexham and Dundee will know far more about our own under 19s than Well fans will.