The problem is a /8 is too big to transact on. Somebody is going to ask questions, and then the scam will be unwound at best, you'll end up in jail at worst.

If he had taken a defunct entity's /16 (class B), it could probably have been marketed more directly. Although, I'm assuming this was long enough ago that it might have been still quite possible to get a previously unused class B from ARIN.