Not "could" happen. It has actually happened. There are scores of instances like this . All you need to do is goto
https://usatt.simplycompete.com/t/search
Then browse various touranamenst such as US Nationals 2022 etc.
Search for players with zero wins & see what their assiged ratings are.after the tournament.
Not anymore. It looks like they no longer use the 4 pass system which did readjustmenst in teh first pass if you gain or lose more than 50 points
It looks like they are using the single pass system used by USATT League system, where there are no adjustments.
Also if it was me and get a high fake rating, I will never ever play in USATT sanctioned tournaments ever again. I will just play ONLY in junsanctoned tournaments and I will be a higher seed using my last high rating from USATT. I wil look like a pro & will have lot of women groupies who will follow me & crave for me. (And all the men will seek advice from me on both tabletennis & non-tabletennis issues & believe whatever I say as gospel)
As a matterof fact there are probbaly 1000s of players who quit once they reach their highest rating usually 2000. My aunt's nephew is also guilty of this too.He broke 2000 with a memorable win beating a 2150 player after trailing 12-20 in deciding game.Before thaIhe was stuck around 1950 for about 7 tournaments. then he thought this is as good as he will ever get & started only playing doubles. Then hee started killing few 2000 players in in leagues & decided to check his luck again in singles & broke 2100 after beating a player who was a Craibbean Junior team member & the current USATT CEO when she was on USA team . Then he lost to Jorgen Persson's then brother in law. (Which was actually very infuriating for him because though Persson's brother in law was such a nice guy, it was not fair that he got to be over 2100 just practising with Persson & to top it off he was also a post doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, life is not fair) .
After that he just started to play only in Open singles against 2600+ players. This was like a better way of taking a lesson from those 2600+ players because if you just take a lesson from a 2600+ player they will just lower their levelto make you lookgood so you will take more lessons.
There is a huge stigma attachd to your current rating even if you were a very high level player many years ago. This is why I have proposed to USATT many times to call only the highest rating of a player as rating and current rating something else such as such Transient Performance Index (TPI) or something (but still use the TPI to assign seedings)