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You might remember this question, which went viral on the network some weeks ago.

After the asker had got many well received answers, (and if I remember correctly, having accepted the answer of JoaoBotello; please confirm, if not, it's not relevant to the point), s/he decided to offer a 100 bounty with the option "Authoritative references needed".

It is well known that a bounty cannot be offered to an answer from self (in the sense that the system won't allow it). Yet, what the OP did was, just a few hours before the bounty expired, to award the bounty to a new answer coming from a new account, which actually has the same name that the original user. Although the owner of the bounty is free to award the bounty to whoever s/he pleases, the quality of the answer is arguably bad, not the least because it is taken from Quora, which you might agree is not an "authoritative reference". This together is pretty decent (albeit not ultimately conclusive) that they answerer and the asker are the same person.

Is this a breach of the rules of the game? If so, do such actions have consequences?

Disclaimer: I confess I bring this up because I am mildly annoyed by the fact that I provided a new answer which aimed to be based in "authoritative references" (and which took some time to do), and yet the bounty went to such a poor answer, provided very likely by the same person, i.e. fraud. Naturally, this is irrelevant to the actual question above, but I prefer to be open on this.

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    $\begingroup$ I voted to close that question. I think it is unclear and should have been (should still be) closed until the user edited to clarify. $\endgroup$
    – Giskard
    Sep 8, 2017 at 11:34
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    $\begingroup$ You are right - my answer was confirmed and than changed for the "fraud" answer, from the same person. Honestly, i dont even see the point for the OP or someone doing this, besides annoying everyone who tried to answer... $\endgroup$
    – JoaoBotelho
    Sep 12, 2017 at 9:00

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Making alt accounts/sockpuppets to manipulate/gain votes is prohibited. I've discussed the appropriate course of action with the general SE mods and told the Econ SE mods about what I've done. Generally, sock puppet accounts are deleted and the original account messaged/suspended.

In the future, it would be good to flag an accounts you believe to be sockpuppets so we can take a look at them :)

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  • $\begingroup$ I see the user has been removed. Is that the case? So this has then been addressed? $\endgroup$
    – luchonacho
    Sep 18, 2017 at 10:00
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    $\begingroup$ "I see that the user has been removed. Is that the case?" The proof is left as an exercise to the reader. :P $\endgroup$
    – Kitsune Cavalry Mod
    Sep 18, 2017 at 18:05

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