According the research from https://www.reddit.com/user/MR_CHNYD Alan Miers seems to be the chief architect of Cryptonote although his original repo doesn't have a snapshot. "Johannes Meier" is listed on Cryptonote.org as their chief cryptographer so one can safely assume it was his alias. Maybe the whitepaper was altered to remove his github link and name from the Cryptonote whitepaper. He also created cryptonote.me, most likely to introduce plausible deniability of his involvement in the project. Additionally, he was also a founding member of the Stanford University Bitcoin Group (https://angel.co/cognitohq/jobs). That doesn't strike me as someone who is looking to scam people with a pump and dump.