Think of it in practical terms. Say he accepts 20k BTC worth of claims on the Internet, no questions asked. Five years from now it is proven Nefario lied, and there's new users for about 12k of those BTC. In five years that's a solid million and-then-some dollars.
Nefario could have pulled this and any other sort of scams since day one. But everybody trusted him all along. Just up to now. Now that is payback time is different: now you need an affidavit.
It makes sense.