[Animats]

As someone who works on conflict of interest problems on Wikipedia, coverups don't work if the incident got substantial press coverage or involved jail time. Small embarrassing problems can sometimes be pushed to the background.

There are at least four rich convicted felons who have Wikipedia articles and paid editors trying to whitewash them. They haven't succeeded.

[danso]

As a Wikipedia reader, my favorite variation of that is when a nobody, some years before, has paid a firm to build up a Wikipedia biography, full of fluff accomplishments so-obscure-that-they're-probably-true, such as "Smith was nominated as Tuscon's Top 100 entrepreneurs Under 100 by TusconEntrepreneurXClub.com in 2012", and perfectly formatted and sourced in such a way that it can escape easy killing by a Wikipedia editor.

Years later, that obscure person gets caught up in an Internet-(infamous) scandal...and instead of just a bunch of self-made pages via LinkedIn, About.me, etc., that they can delete, they now have a suspiciously-seeming astroturfed Wikipedia entry with a prominent "Scandals/Controversy" subhead. And Wikipedia's pagerank being what it is...virtually no reputation-astroturf effort will overtake it.