Just to clarify a few things in this post since I think there is some confusion on how earning through curating works. It's unfortunate, but the documentation that is show in the post is very very out of date (not the authors fault, since it is shown on the a steem.io webpage even though it's not linked into the home page.)

There are some things that have been added, changed as well as aspects not somewhat hidden in the math.

Examples of this include the post payout split now being 75% to the author and 25% to curators (which used to be 50/50) and a percentage penalty applied to people who vote before the post is 30 minutes old.

One other part that may not have been fully spelled out in that webpage was that how much Steem Power you have effects what you receive for curation rewards, essentially tranlated into the vote payout weight calculation.

let total_vote_reward = 50% of the content reward
let steem_power = the total STEEM power of the vote
let current_total_steem_power = the combined STEEM power of all past votes
let new_total_steem_power = current_total_steem_power + steem_power;
let vote_payout_weight = steem_power * (steem_power/new_total_steem_power)^2

with the final calculation being
let total_vote_payout_weight = sum vote_payout_weight for all votes on the post

Unfortunately, having little Steem Power means earning fewer curation rewards. While I can see how it can be frustrating if somebody expected without wither building up or buying into a larger account...I don't see how the economics could work if every single person who joined got large rewards from voting. It's one of the few remaining benefits to holding larger amounts of Steem Power.

You can find some of this spelled out a little more clearly here.

None of this is meant to blame the author of this post, but I did want to clear up what I think was a misunderstanding due to that webpage being out of date (and not linked to the steem.io home page). While I can get the frustration this might have caused, I don't really see it's accurate to call this a scam.