Appreciate the feedback MCCPool.
Have you turned off block updates being posted on the front end because of load? Have you turned off anything else that might usually be displayed on the front-end (website pages)? If yes then posted messages on the dashboard would be useful to alley the fears of those who do not understand tuning a pool's performance while under heavy load / stressed.
I ask because the website only shows 1 block (993) being processed by your pool that has around 167 workers doing 205.594 Mh/s
No, there is no scam involved. There have been technical issues with the launch.
It appears most(all?) pools also had the same/similar issues.
This has been very stressful for me

Please understand that I did all in my power to troubleshoot the issue,
but in the end I don't think it was a problem isolated to my pool.