Delay in payments does not always mean that the team cheats, sometimes the project is so weak that the team simply does not risk putting more coins into circulation!
Yes, delay in bounty payments does not always mean that the team cheated but in crypto sphere people dont play with time, rules and regulations cause it very vitals. However, I believe lead to project team delaying bounty hunters payment is because they dont want the price of the coin to dump because they believe bounty hunters are always behind the dump in price of new project while the early miners are always the one behind it.