"Money does not change people, it reveals them" Henry Ford.

I live my life by this code because you can very easily see who is genuine and who is not.
One thing I look for is the "replies" or "no replies" to comments given or NOT given by those who have a big following or are whales.

Often you can see that, if a so called "important" steemian makes a comment on their post , then a reply is given back. But when a newbie or a minnow makes a comment, then no reply is given back.
For me this is revealing for it says; "I only give attention to those whom I see as "important"."
And what exactly is "important". Well either you have a lot of money/steem power, or you have a big following. In other words the message is; "If you are small you dont exist in my eyes so contact me again when you are big".
This is a form of elitism and is actually a psychopathic trait. The idea that some are deservedly more important than another just because of wealth.

Our actions and non actions reveal our intentions.

I am not making any judgements about Mr Banfield and will keep my opinon to myself. I merely tell this so that people can quickly discover for themselves if Mr Banfield is or is not genuine by looking at his replies or non replies. To whom does he reply to and whom does he not. Does he reply to only "important" steemians or does he also reply to non-important steemians... and how often.

I will give an opinion on this post however. I think it was a very brave action to bring to light something you feel was immoral or dishonest and for this you must be congratulated.
It is such things that are in the spirit of fairness in which is steemit was built for. At least that is my belief, and why I joined steemit in the first place. We either want steemit to have a reputation for making money in an honesty way or a reputation for making money for the sake of making money at all cost. The latter is the way the world is already. I thought we were all here to try to make a better world in our small way.
Either way, history shows that greed always kills the golden goose.

I guess Steemit is still in beta and we are all part of a great social experiment to see how a society would or could function if the economy were based on the blockchain.