You can't cash in on sympathy card anymore, and such pretensions are, in my opinion, totally off.
$crypto$ warned you about the plagiarism in the project on March 23rd. However, you completely ignored the warning and did nothing despite being active on the forum almost every day.
The first time you addressed the scam accusation was on April 4, but even even then, you did nothing to stop the bounty campaign or warn participants. You didn't even distance yourself from the project, which any respectable manager would do in a situation like this. As I watched your reaction, I gave you a few more days after that, but you completely failed to address the issue properly. We can only speculate now if you would have ever reacted if I hadn't tagged your account. And, by the way, the bounty thread is still active and new bounty reports keep coming.