Wouldn't a scam pool set fees to 0% or very low, but not 3%, to attract more people into its scam?
It doesn't really make sense to me. But there are so many things that don't make sense in BTC world... *sigh*
3% PPS was absurdly low (VERY high chance of bankruptcy). Additionally, it's highly unlikely the pool was started to be a scam. Far more likely is they were using user funds as a form fractional reserve banking and selling coins that they owed to users under the assumption that a lot of old account balances were abandoned/only a certain % of funds would ever be withdrawn in rapid succession. Then the rally hit, and as any long time pool owner knows, withdrawal frequency goes absolutely nuts during an all-time high rally and they couldn't pay their debts due to selling the coins early.