smooth is making some money, if he wasn't affiliated with the devs there's no problem, he just got lucky to hear about the launch before the crowd
Dash insiders were just making some money also. That didn't stop smooth from fiercely attacking their reputation.
Btw, I heard about Dan Larimer's plan to stealth mine when he first published the blog post about using such a technique to launch and avoid legal issues of ICOs. I believe I was the one who mentioned it to smooth because of the communication between us about legality and ethics of ICOs and distribution schemes. I did not mine Steemit.