Unfortunately this shotgun type approach to leaving negative feedback is just designed to enhance the social status of the leaver by making it appear they are doing more, at the expense of simply uninformed users making simple mistakes. It happens constantly. The real problem is scammers will come back with a bought account in 30 seconds, people who made an honest mistake will just not return, leading to an increasingly scammer saturated environment.

These specific circumstances could go either way, I could see this just being an honest mistake. Often these higher ranking users have no respect for the time invested in creating a reputation and will default on destroying it rather than erring on the side of caution. After all to keep track of the user is an actual investment of time. Shotgunning negatives to make yourself look good is easy.