and yes some scammers have channels with unbacked balance
I don't believe this is possible. If it is, put your money where your mouth is, create a channel with an unbacked balance, try to spend it and see what happens.
i have actually played around with LN not to find the best usecase.
not to use it by the limits of how its intended to be used. but by actually trying to find the flaws and holes.
you know the worse use cases. but for me done it in scenarios where the other parties involved in my tests knew what i was attempting so that they did not actually lose anything and i made them whole in cases where any loses were made to them.
(few tests done in regtest mode too)
but imagine someone without morals that just wants greed. who can abuse it and make people lose out and just not care
about the others
try to think about the holes and exploits of LN
there are there many other exploits too
for one because users do not blokchain review other users balance multiple hops away.
as the whole point is that people can keep things a secret within their channel(supposedly on best use practices, but that can be exploited)
you can also claim a channel balance using funds in one channel.. and in a totally different channel with a totally different partner. claim the funds are in those too.
you know lock 1 amount of 0.1btc.. but than have 3 separate channels on 3 nodes that say that those funds are in those channels too.
you can even open a channel with funds that were locked or even having no onchain lock. and confirmed a year ago. as if it was fresh channel
you can check if its even possible by seeing channels that are only open for 30-60 days. but using blockchain data from a year ago
you would be quite surprised what is possible
heck you can even use it in 'best case' scenario. and HYIP scam people
once you start to dip your toe into the water of seeing what can be exploited. you will start to not want to associate or pretend that LN is as good or as secure as bitcoin
atleast try to think about user security and protection and not just think about corporate brand image protection
heck you might even want to do some research on things like 'payment of death' while our at it
