Wouldn’t it just be hilarious if he set about to make a ‘scam’ device imitating known LENR techniques, and accidentally created a device that really works.
I guess the closest historical parallel I can come up with was how Corn Flakes was invented. The guys owned a Nursing Home for old folks, and they were trying to find a way to give the geezers even cheaper bread. The experiment failed, and they figured the geezers wouldn’t know the difference. So they served up the flakes in a bowl of milk and the rest is history.
Or maybe a parallel would be Buggsy Siegel, trying to scam a bunch of people in Las Vegas and figured out that you can actually make good money just keeping to an honest house percentage.