So it seems like the only way someone could do this is either with a bot program that automatically picked up charters, or if the people who released the charter (not regular crew schedules, but futures or whomever built them) called someone right before the release, told them the info and said--press the button now. Or did it for them. Seems like that would be incredibly easy to trace, with a track record of years. Makes you wonder with the freeze--unfreeze thing going on. If it was happening in my airplane, I'd call and ask who exactly was responsible for releasing the trip. Then I'd call that person and ask when they were going to release, and if so, were they going to make sure that person XX was getting the trip as usual. And see what their response was. I think if that scheduler was getting called on it a lot, they might realize their job was in jeopardy. That is, if that's what was going on.