From time to time the media will release puff pieces about a "genius" high school student that discovered something/invented something/won some national science

From time to time the media will release puff pieces about a "genius" high school student that discovered something/invented something/won some national science fair "with the help of a local university lab/professor". I used to think that these actually were genius kids that spent their free time pursuing scholarly pursuits and somehow befriending professors. But what I've seen happen (multiple times) is that a lab PI convinces one of their grad-students/post-docs that "it would be a great mentorship opportunity for you to have <highshool student that just so happens to be my friend's kid> finish up that project you've been working on". The end result is that some well-connected kid gets credit for the whole project on their applications, but the grad-student/post-doc that has already done 95% of the work just has to hand it over and can't use/publish their own experiment