What's with "-1" blocks peers?

The BCH, BSV, and (especially) Dogecoin networks are flooded with peers that have "synced_blocks" set to -1. These peers connect and then never seem to receive or send any further blocks. Out of 170 peers that connected to our Dogecoin node, our software banned 158 of them for this behavior.

Bittrex is also having problems with getting stable connections to the network, probably because there are so many of these peers.

Does anyone know what the purpose of running all these peers is if they don't forward blocks and are always behind? Are these nodes misconfigured in some way and that misconfiguration has persisted as the default settings in new clients? Is this some sort of criminal activity, perhaps targeted at stealing money from someone? If so, I can't see how, because these nodes aren't forwarding blocks like a 51% attack would.

If I can figure out why these nodes exist, perhaps I can better do something about it.