RE: Case 7: raping the reward pool with 1700+ accounts - things are getting serious!
Well well well... "Elementary my dear watson".
Nicely done @sherlockholmes i see this as the work of well programmed and synchronized bots.
Its crazy whats going on here... It could be the programmer has seen a flaw in the steemit structure and is all out to exploit it.
Truly, if this is left unchecked, the puppeteer behind this racket will be raking in hundreds of thousands of SBDs....
From analysing a few of the accounts you posted, it is obvious the puppeteer is still experimenting this technique as he carefully picks very old posts, which attracted no votes or comments or interest during their 7 days payout period, and this of course was purposely done with the intention that his activities will go unnoticed by the steemit enforcement units, at least until a time that they build up sufficient SBDs (whale status) in particular accounts which are probably still undiscovered by @sherlockholmes, and then they can begin to cause real havoc on the system to their advantage when they start flexing their whale muscles.
you're quite correct, and the network I've been able to identify is not the only one, albeit, hopefully a particularly large one.
The pattern you correctly describe can be seen in numerous smaller operations. That's why it's so important to get AI recognition on this like @sadkitten is attempting.
More importantly though, the guys at the steemit HQ need to work on the account verification, essentially they are sponsoring operations like these by not vetting their signups properly!