Vitalik has conceded this was a mistake and has stated he will no longer have any formal role in outside ethereum businesses. He also stated that he was not paid for any of these advisory positions he held.

I've personally seen the price sheets for what he's billed out per hour, and sat through advisory work meetings with him. While it's possibly he wasn't officially paid for those specific ICO advisory positions, he certainly was getting paid for advisory work.

Yes, he meant specifically for ICO advisory positions. Certainly (like almost every other developer) he has been paid for contract work/consulting for some project at some point.

He is 'invested' in a lot of these coins though. Seems to be able to own them before they ico. HMMM

And a lot of those were actually fake / without any sort of authorization. Some projects also just put ppl as a "advisors" because they answered a question that one time.

Btw, Given is the number of Ethereum founders is small, you're probably referring to some of many devs working for the foundation as contractors.