Is link juice transferred through fake links?
 

I am discovering more and more backlinks towards legit sites, but with no actual links.

For example, check this url and its backlinks:
SEOLeadership - Five Powerful Search Engine Optimisation Techniques By Self Proclaimed 1 "White Hat" Thought Leader In SEO Eitan Gorodetsky - Travel Manitoba

This url has a DA of 62 and all links target popular domains, but the final links are including spam words and they result at 404

So, I wonder what is the purpose of doing this. Is someone trying to connect such legit sites to spam links so they will get some Google penalty?
Because I can't believe that the actual sites are involved into this to receive the link juice in that way.