I noticed this potential exploit last night and alerted the 'powers that be'.
From my understanding of the rewards system (which I admit is still quite limited), the exploit could've been averted if the voting window (Vote Window Days parameter in scotbot) had been switched from the default (full window) to 5 or 6 days.
That was my recommendation late last night, anyways. That would have allowed downvoting and/or other mitigation measures to be put in place before the exploit became fully instantiated.
I have my own thoughts on how to 'fix' the problem now that it has occurred, which I will detail in a separate post.
In particular, I have two thoughts, a simple one about 'making whole' those whose pending rewards got wiped out by the exploit and a complex one about how to improve the overall POB system itself (to make it less susceptible to whales and bots dominating the voting process).
Stay tuned!
There are several ways it could have been averted. I noticed it before you alerted me and had already discussed it with @eonwarped and was assured that the payouts were just showing way off. Eon was obviously mistaken, but I can't dwell on that. We will move forward and do everything we can to make things right.