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?
It is very much possible especially if the coin in particular is running on their own blockchain which might be a private network. I've had experience with a similar situations, the teams do have the ability to blacklist certain ip address and leave access to certain few. I'm not sure but reasoning logically, i think the people giving positive feedback are set of people who have direct link with the team and they are doing so to shill the coin