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's possible, nothing that teams can go around with... A friend of mine once had a similar case such as this and the project later fold up and that's why it is always advised that if you notice any foul play from team, you should just sell off your bag and move away from the project. It has been a common strategy use by teams to deceive investor and users, they will enable activities on the wallet of some people associated with them to give out testimonies but froze up investors accounts