If that's true, it would be pretty interesting.
Actually, this kind of thing is nothing new anymore - it's no different from a pig butchering scam.
The project team uses high staking rewards to attract people to stake and lock up tokens, reduces selling pressure from circulation, manipulates the token price, and once the price pumps, it just keeps falling. Then they rebrand and continue harvesting users. Reference the previous OM, now rebranded to MANTRA
$RIVER