Media people are notoriously ignorant of technical and scientific matters. Sadly a not insignificant minority of the people who pop up on these threads are similarly credulous about these things - not only that, but absolutely unwilling to be convinced otherwise by people who do understand this stuff.
These guys have probably found lots of support in Clearwater, Florida, however - people who can buy any of Scientology's crap will believe anything, I'm thinking.
I nominate this as perhaps the best insight offered so far in this thread... the reason that junk mail outfits are eager to buy mailing lists of idiots who respond to "Publisher's Clearing House" style Sweepstakes is that such people have a disproportionately high positive response rate to OTHER junk-mail offers, like magazine subscriptions. The best target for a scam is someone whose already bought into someone else's...... they have already demonstrated the requisite lack of intellectual skepticism coupled with the highly desireable (from the standpoint of the scammer) attributes of gullibility and willingness to invest his money in scientifically baseless horseshit.