According to Charles Stross's explanation of how Worldcons work, you don't really need to fake votes - you can just buy them at $50/pop:
> My understanding is that a bunch of Chinese fans who ran a successful regional convention in Chengdu (population 21 million; slightly more than the New York metropolitan area, about 30% more than London and suburbs) heard about the worldcon and thought "wouldn't it be great if we could call ourselves the world science fiction convention?"
> They put together a bid, then got a bunch of their regulars to cough up $50 each to buy a supporting membership in the 2021 worldcon and vote in site selection. It doesn't take that many people to "buy" a worldcon—I seem to recall it's on the order of 500-700 votes—so they bought themselves the right to run the worldcon in 2023. And that's when the fun and games started.
> My understanding is that a bunch of Chinese fans who ran a successful regional convention in Chengdu (population 21 million; slightly more than the New York metropolitan area, about 30% more than London and suburbs) heard about the worldcon and thought "wouldn't it be great if we could call ourselves the world science fiction convention?"
> They put together a bid, then got a bunch of their regulars to cough up $50 each to buy a supporting membership in the 2021 worldcon and vote in site selection. It doesn't take that many people to "buy" a worldcon—I seem to recall it's on the order of 500-700 votes—so they bought themselves the right to run the worldcon in 2023. And that's when the fun and games started.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldco...
No scam involved at all, to be honest - just regular voting-with-money.