So here are my thoughts from an outsiders point of view (I have no involvement, or even really knowledge of what had happened, hell before this all blew up I had no idea who prom was until multiple people/sources state he is a P&Der, which is pretty scummy if you ask me).
Everything that was posted is very concerning, but to me stops short of scamming. Rather, i'd like to use the word scummy instead since Dan associates with prom.
I will say this however, and one more person to add to the list of people XC should have never been involved with was Jasin from Fibonacci. This one I can talk to at length considering I was the one who tried one last attempt to smooth things over between Jasin and his investors. Instead of helping, he completely stopped posting here and Litecointalk, along with delete his website. So he walked away with a cool mil or two of money.
The XC team defended him pretty hard, at first as a dev and then as a contributor, and that along with all of this recent information makes XC seem very shady to me. Again just an outsiders perspective.
if you recall in the summer, Jasin was actually active in XC threads for some time, and even posted in the XC thread regarding the ASICS. He assured the team and some community members that everything would get resolved. People shut up after this point and that is ultimately why XC defended him for the time being. As the summer went on, someone else brought up that fact about Jasin and Fibonacci again (months later) and it was at that time that XC reassessed the situation. It was also at this time that the team realized that this might be a much bigger issue than they anticipated, seeing as how no progress was really made with the situation. They dumped him right at the end of summer and released a general statement to the public. It may seem shady to some people what took place, but just realize that the team did correct the situation as it was hurting XC. AFAIK, Jasin did not contribute anything to XC other than offering his coding services, which he never fulfilled. It was a no brainer to cut ties with him if he was causing XC more harm than good. Its just sad that people somehow still think XC is related to Jasin and his ASIC project. People cannot get into contact to talk with Jasin, so they just go to the closest thing Jasin was associated with in XC, and start spamming the boards with speculation about XC being part of the issue. That has never been the case as Jasin's project was completely separate and irrelevant to XC. XC will also not go out of its way to talk with Jasin regarding the issue as it is none of their business and does not pertain to their coin at all. I dont understand why this issue keeps being brought up every now and then like people think the teaam is magically going to help them get their money back from Jasin.
Crap like this happens all the time in the real world, you might unknowingly hire employees who dont have the best reputations arounde whether they are work or personal matters. Teams dont really do in depth screening processes. It generally works by someone offering their services, a negotiation takes place, then they are on the team. As a coder in crypto, it wouldn't take long to join a team if you are offering your skills because every coin is looking for that extra bit of human capital. It just so happens that XC brought on board somebody that was offering their services, who also had some discrepancies with their personal life project. XC however did do the right thing and removed him seeing as how the issue had not been resolved over several months.