I understand and support upvoting comments enough that they don't get hidden by abusive downvotes, but upvoting to $12 does seem like poor diplomacy. Most of the people who run or participate in these scams honestly don't seem to understand where the payouts come from or why they're abusive, so if we can minimize the animosity they're more likely to contribute positively to the community in the future.
You're obviously free to vote as you choose, and currently I only downvote spam and scams. As obnoxious as he is, I do think hiding pivi's responses is counterproductive though.