He’s not a fraud in OP verse nor is he scummy.
The issue is that from a perspective of a reader the whole Vegapunk reputation sounds cheesy. No one is blaming him for reading books lol. But as a character hyped for 15 years as the most brilliant, 500 years ahead of his time etc etc, it’s still kinda hilarious that he had 2 major advantages limited only to him.
He’s no longer special, nor work harder than the other MADS necessarily. If these tools were available to the other team members we would have had the same result, which is not something you expect after this hype.