I was wary of the elderly on-line scam defence tactic. He spent a significant time on the internet and was familiar with electronic communications. And it took me only a few seconds to find out that lived in L.A. at the time of the scam. That was less than basic due diligence.

His "greatest dream" was to win a Nobel by factually verifying "through experimentation" an amazing prediction. Any great scientist must balance the odds of failure against the price of failure and he seems to have forgotten basic methods during that step in this particular experiment.