Yes, there was rule that if someone sponsored more than 5 accounts, they will be refunded. And from the beginning it was actually allowed by UF to have more than one stake, it was changed after time by community demand and by criticism from some NXTers. I dont even see how UP broke those rules.
And I dont even think that he did something wrong. He was trolling other coin? He has right to voice his opinions on other coins, no?. It was responsible from him towards NEM project to express his opinions privatly - via alter ego account, to not draw undesirable attention and negative response to NEM. It seems just rational and responsible to me.
The whole point of "fair distribution" to me, was not about having perfectly equal shares, but to not have whales, that could manipulate the market easily...I remember that NXT was often accused of market manipulation by whales, UP probably just wanted to avoid it.
This is my personal view of the problem.
The real scandal was him trolling Sim coin. It would be like Satoshi account being caught trolling the thread of a $hitclone. That was the real scandal but it was quickly forgotten within 5 minutes. What emerged was a 'hypothetical scandal' revolving around negative proof that UtopianFuture had a thousand sockpuppets. He must had been doing cocaine and 20 cups of coffee a day to register 1000 accounts within 28 days, especially to bypass all the anti-sock measures (taint analysis) and the anti-spam features on this website.
As I stated - just to have the influence that a NxT investor (one of the 20 who invested 1 BTC) had, UtopianFuture or anyone would have to create 160 sockpuppets. If you can create 160 sockpuppets and avoid being caught then arguably you probably deserve those stakes but; in reality, no one has done that due to the sheer labour involved at the time when NEM had no value. There were probably NxT investors who registered with 3 accounts, so UF would have to create close to 500 socks just to match some guy back in 2013 who randomly threw BTC in. Have to recall that UF and the developers actually did organizing or developing work.