Nope, Neanderthals are quite real and not a fraud. There have been other frauds but Neanderthals are not one of them. They are also not modern humans or even related to us except that they walked upright and were intelligent to a high degree.
It's an agenda thing, not a truth thing. People who use lies and deception can't really believe in the truth of what they're defending - I think it's more of attempts to somehow discredit intelligent design because the agenda is, "There's no God."