Ratimov wasn't a scammer.
Yet. He did not scam yet. But Halab's contest -- supposed to be sponsored by him -- will end soon (~2 weeks) and from that moment forward the winners of the contest will be in the legitimate situation to raise a flag against him. Given the feeling that multiple users (including DT) will support this flag, the outcome of such action would be turning Ratimov Symmetrick into a scammer.
Instead, he always attacked people who pointed out his bad side. People learn from their mistakes, but if someone believes they are always right and doesn't accept criticism for their wrongdoing, they are not going to survive.
Alternatively, he should have never presented the work of reputable authors as being his. Impersonating them! Stealing their work! Perhaps that would have been a much better approach. Just be happy for being named Newbie of 2019 and earn his ranking on the forum in a normal manner, like 99% of forum users do. Perhaps he would have earned his first 1000 merits in a year but he would have been someone with common sense.
Another better approach would have been to never aim to earn thousands of merits by copy-paste. What he did was like any of us would just copy-paste Andreas Antonopoulos's Mastering Bitcoin and earn 5000 merits from that topic. He did same thing, but with the help of multiple topics.
At some point he even tried to race LoyceV and show him that he can reach faster than Loyce to 10000 merits or 11000 or so (I can't find that post but I believe LV remembers the discussion).
Another post which he made from pure ego was after he was exposed for plagiarism by airfinex: LoyceV made a mention that Ratimov's light speed pace for earning merits decreased after airfinex's topic and, in exchange, Ratimov replied with a tone like he was ridiculing the entire forum even more:
That being said, after several topics calling him out for plagiarism his large Merit earnings have dropped significantly:
They fell for this reason alone:
All the most significant goals at this forum have been achieved, now can relax. Thanks to everyone who supported me and appreciated my posts. 
After reaching 3000 merit, I decided to take a break from the forum. If I wanted to, I would continue to earn 200-400 merit a month. Maintaining this pace of activity is very difficult. I spended 5-30 hours of my time on each topic or big guide.
All these accusations did not affect my activity in any way..
Apparently, for a short moment, he was happy with
So coming back, I guess these facts should have never happened. He could keep being pathetic at taking criticism, just like TimeLord is. But just act like a normal forum user. But noooo he wanted to be number 1! He wanted to be the best! He wanted to be the ace at everything!
And for this he tried all shenanigans possible. Until people finally allowed themselves to open their eyes about this thief.