Every time a Scrum project goes badly, any criticism attributed to Scrum is deflected with this no true scottsman argument.
News flash: nobody is doing the actual, literal version of Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Nobody. So if you use this argument to deflect criticisms of Scrum, be consistent & don't attribute any success stories to Scrum either.
This is both true and not exculpatory, IME. I've often referred to/heard this referred to as "Scrum-but", i.e. "Scrum, but X", and it's pretty true in my experience that Scrum legitimizes and encourages Scrum-but.
There are places where Scrum is legitimately useful (as a way for managing stakeholders when dealing with war-room problems where the entire implementation team is of roughly equivalent competency and is literally sitting around a table), but beyond that, the first hint of Scrum-but and the boat's taking on water.
That is something outside the scope of scrum. Whoever you hired may have called that scrum, but it seems they were bringing in unrelated processes.
> turned simple decisions into decision by committee
Scrum isn't a decision-making framework either.