I have some suspicion a coin I'm staking had a team take over it that "cooked it's books" somehow. The wallet keeps stalling and will not sync, and there are others on the thread/channel that say they are able to sync and stake. This has happened a number of times since a person took over the development. The blockchain their new coin creates never works for more than a few weeks but supposedly for a couple people it does. Many chime in on the thread that they are not able to sync.
I know behind the scenes at the code level (or maybe node level) there is a lot of control a developer can have. Is it possible for a corrupt team to make it that only certain people are getting stakes?
Yes, they can. Don't believe in new and fresh face dev with no reputation. They can applied those tricks as you said to maximize their profit of staking and no one would bat an eye. I saw myself of a few proof of stake coin with kinda rouge dev like this and that is why I only trust proof of stake with a well-maintain code.