Maybe you should add the "[CryptoNote] A complete forking guide to create your own CryptoNote currency" thread as part of the "scam".

Monero had gained a lot of attention but because the mysterious devs didn't manage to financially gain from Monero's rise, they attempted to do a "scorched earth" approach to create a bunch of useless coins to dilute the CryptoNote "brand", trying to eliminate the network effect of Monero. But that didn't exactly go as planned either. They thought that if they couldn't have fame and fortune then no other CN coins should too.