Pain fellowships retracting offers?

[TheRoc]

I was warned by a fellow applicant that in years past, not only have applicants reneged on their word to attend a certain program...but programs have actually retracted their offers after finding "better" candidates later in the process. Has anyone heard of this happening? Now that some programs are in the Match (and even many of those are only offering some of their spots in the Match), how cautious should we be about accepting an offer outside the Match (and therefore withdrawing from the NRMP Match before rank lists are due), but then later having the program tell us, sorry, actually, we're gonna have to take that spot back (and since it wasn't apart of the Match, I guess they can legally do that). Unfortunately, by that time, we will have presumably already withdrawn from the Match and won't even be eligible for the Scramble. Any thoughts?

And FYI, in case anyone didn't know, if you accept an offer outside the Match but don't withdraw from NRMP, you're banned for a few years from applying for fellowship.

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[jabreal00]

My wife was accepted at Hopkins for a pain fellowship several years ago. She is military and was waiting for the okay to be released for training by the military. Hopkins didn't want to risk the military denying her and missing out on a potential equally qualified or better candidate so they reneged. When she applied there was no match that I can remember. She eventually got the clearance and went on to train at another pain program that accepted her.