I'm glad you took time to dig this up, a lot like these has been happening recently, I noticed the hike started from January. When you check this accounts, you would notice they are new accounts, not active except for the #spendhbd project which is their main target, no followers.

I think the account was created for the sole purpose of extorting. I noticed one of such account and I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned in your post. @petesteve has no face to the account, hasn't done anything other than Spendhbd and the account is less than a month. It's really outrageous how people do things without thinking of future benefits.