i can’t see how paying someone would have changed anything in this scenario.
this seems to be a long running campaign to get someone into a position where they could introduce malicious code. the only thing different would have been that the bad actor would have been paid by someone.
this is not to say, that people working on foss should not be paid. if anything we need more people actively reviewing code and release artifacts even if they are not a contributor or maintainer of a piece of software.