Some of the massive bids I mentioned in the post were refunded, but not all (at least, not the last time I checked). Plenty of bots don't give any refunds whatsoever, so if you submit an invalid URL or too little SBD or STEEM, they'll treat it as a donation.
I haven't heard of the Frontrunner Guild. What is it that they do?
Haha i think when it didn't get refunded, at least for the Booster ones is where they actually lost money :)
The frontrunner guild works with the Booster bot. Basically they upvote folks who've sent money to Booster before Booster votes. They do this in order to get the curation awards. Now if the SBD is returned, the scammer still gets the votes from frontrunner. Free and easy money.
I can't be sure but i think frontrunner has blocked voting for certain users. Which is why the funds are transferred on behalf of someone else. Just my guess here.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Is it unreasonable of us to think that people shouldn't game a platform that's been gamified?
I wouldn't have a problem if they were upvoting themselves for good content. Manual curation has been pretty crappy and it's only fair that good content is rewarded.
Good content may be subjective but i think we can all agree when content is bad:
Edit: The only way to stop this is when it becomes unprofitable for them. Some of the spammers have been upping their bids so this will probably reach its natural conclusion pretty soon.