How is it a "scam"?
I believe my first post explained this clearly.
Who got ripped off, who lost money, who was misrepresented, who gained/profited?
The donors were ripped off, because they were led to believe it would be used to reward the results of a sane/fair poll.
Or is it just a scam because you didn't like the nominees?
My main point is that all these very valid candidates
were in fact nominated, and BitcoinBetas assured us that he would moderate the vandals taking them off the wiki-spreadsheet before making his final lists of candidates. Then instead of doing so, he went and ran with what was de facto a very vandalized "nomination list".