You can get scrutinized. If your link aquisition looks unnatural to boot, you’re done.
Indiscriminate linking is risky.
Besides, you’ll get red flagged by macaffee advisor and that has quite an effect. That’s what advisor does a lot, dinking sites for linking to bad sites. They just look at how many bad sites you are “associated” with and it is very hard to get rid of the red flag. They even look at aff links and dink you for them if they don’t like where they go. They don’t lift the red flag just like that, it takes time, then they switch to yellow, and after months they will finally give you green. They say it’s a matter of reputation and it takes time to lift a bad reputation.
So, links to bad neighborhoods can get you.
Links from bad neighborhood can also get you at google – by association. One or two go under the radar, but if you have a bunch you may get flagged.
This is what google bowling used to be based on. If you get penalized and think you have been google bowled (doesn’t happen much anymore) you can file for reinclusion and they will have a look.