Can Links from Scrapers Hurt You?

AWall posts about "good links" and "bad links":

Have you ever had a strong ranking site filtered out of the results
because automated links gave you an unnatural linkage profile?

I have never seen an instance of this. (Have you?) To be honest it sounds tin-foil hattish to me.

That being said, I do try to get one high-powered link to every new Web site I put up; that way, if someone quickly jacks my content and Google puts us head to head for canonization, my site comes out on top.