The people who do this are sad, IMO, and I do feel sorry for them.
It does not change how I feel about the Seti@Home project in the least, nor will it impact my participation in any way: bottom line is I was crunching before I ended up at OC.Com and joined the OC Seti Team, and I'll continue as long as there is a project- stats or no!
But the stats HAVE added to the participation without a doubt!
Its too bad that some people feel such a need to be ahead that they will sell the project, and teammates/competitors short by cheating.
And even if the results turned in are valid- just far too many, etc, they ARE still a drain on the project! We have all felt the impact of low bandwidth at Berkeley, and they do have limited equipment and resources.
This kind of thing wastes them horribly.