Claim Flag in Illegal Territory???

[Barakas 0]

Finally found a place to claim a bit of land after an entire day of searching.  I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the mechanics of placing a flag.  If you try to plant a flag outside of another claim "circle" but your claim "circle" would touch theirs then you can't plan the flag.  If you go inside another claim circle you can plant your flag to contest their claim.  If you plant your flag so your claim circle does not touch any other claim circle then you start a 10 minute countdown to claim the land.

So, with that said, how is the attached picture possible?  I woke up this morning to find that someone had planted a flag between my claim and another person's claim.  You can see that their red circle is crossing two of my companies claim circles and another person's claim circle.  How the heck did this get planted???  Did claiming get totally bugged in a patch last night?

Also, where the heck are all of the resources?!?!

[Barakas 0]

Managed to get on top of the cliff.  Here's another shot of the seriously overlapping claim flag.

[archaegeo 192]

Apparently you can plant a second claim flag within a completely claim which ignores the area it will be taking over.

[Barakas 0]

I tried to do that to see if that is indeed what happened but I keep getting the interference error that says I can't plant the flag.  So, there is some exploit that people are using to do this right now because it's not a normal game mechanic that everyone can use.