BCX is completely right about this actually. It is open source software, you can release as many versions as you want. No one is forced to mine it.
If I decide to release 1000 different flavors of an open source calculator I find on Github, would you call that a scam too?
Not at all the same thing. No one will invest or lose monetarily from your calculator.
The opposite of a scam would be honesty and integrity, and you can't say Spots ran his coins with either.
What about the lies about all of his plans to promote his coins and get merchants to accept them? He knew this was never going to happen, but he propagated these lies to encourage people to invest in his coins.