an altcoin is called scam when there is a big amount of premine, a big ICO, and a coin that has 1 or two developers who are shady and are doing some shady things. and generally when they are out to fill their pockets only by pumping their coin and dumping their premine and ICO coin.

i am not saying litecoin is the best thing, it obviously has problems but LTC falls under none of these categories.