Neil wrote him a training plan to get sub-3:30 at VMLM last year. This would apparently gain him another £5k "sponsorship", from individual/company unknown. Other than one session which he attended - the infamous post-30 mile combat yomp one - and at which he struggled, he did not partake of any of Neil's actual sessions. He proffered no data from his training programme, other than to say each time that he'd completed it. The excuses for having no marathon time included, inter alia, non-functioning tag and that Special Forces personnel results were never published, for security reasons. And then, miraculously, the 3:12 time claim appeared, having been "sorted with the organisers".
I told Neil that there was no way that he was SF - that, for many, many reasons, it just didn't ring true. Neil distanced himself from that point on, whilst trying to steer a middle line...because, after all, he was doing this for WWTW. And, just maybe, Neil is far less cynical than me. At this point, no one was thinking he was much beyond him being a Walt about his forces record.
We are all guilty of having 20/20 hindsight. Neil is a loyal guy, who will go out of his way to help anyone - unless he gets his leg lifted, which happened on this occasion. Like I said previously, direct your ire and efforts at the principal players in this: no one else is involved in the scam.