Good info. People need to be made aware.
The trick with all the spaces is smart, very smart.

In your third scenario, it wouldn’t take long before the phishing comments sent out with your account got flagged, which would bring your rep score (and credibility) back to 0 rapidly. That’s what happened during the recent series of phishing scams. An account(like mine) was stolen and used to send out the messages. Before those got flagged, the sustem still said my tep was 53. So nobody saw anything suspicious. But the flags were there fast, bringing my rep to -1.
I wouldn’t click a link from anyone - not even my best friend - if there would be 0 or -1 next to his name..