It’s actually a myth that it was a scam. I worked on the Y2K problem back in ‘97 and ‘98. Our company had thousands of Y2K bugs that had to be fixed or the company’s entire system would have crashed. It took months of hard work to correct.
Sorted records in the wrong order? Crashed, no. I can't think of any reason why a date problem would cause any true havoc. Please provide details of any case you know to be contrary to this assertion.