"This is not passing the smell test even slightly. Nothing wrong with a review of it, I suppose, if only to get the kooks to be quiet. Reminds me of that cold fusion debacle a few years back."
I suppose this idea could be considered stupider than cold fusion---though not very much stupider. Don't forget how the cold fusion fiasco ended. The Utah State Legislature came up with another 1 or 2 million dollars to give these two guys running the scam---but they had already vanished! They've never been heard from since.
These people have some kind of magic trick. One of the keys to this kind of situation is---they bring in qualified physicists, but physicists are not necessarily the best people to debunk a magic trick. They need to bring in that guy who makes a living debunking all magic processes---can't remember his name. I believe he is both a physicist and a licensed magician.
Another possibility is that these people have secretly corrupted a respected physicist somehow and will "plant" him among the testers. It's got to be some kind of relatively fast sting, I would think. "Due to overwhelming demand, we are only able to make this extraordinary ground-floor investment opportunity available for the next 24 hours...Please wire cash via Western Union."