Reading the thread, it seems that he has already sacrificed his privacy but he's still under the impression of talking under an alias with his past.
It is all connected while reading the whole story so, there's a possibility that it may be for real. If he's just making a story and just trolling around, he's got a lot of time for it but there's no benefit for him.
It's probably just all about remembering the past and how he's able to exploit it with a lot of money, no gain for him for making this thread.
Supposing this story is actually true, I believe that it's not that hard to connect the dots and find the incident and the suspect, if the OP is actually responsible for it, his privacy has already been compromised, just like you said. Anyway, from how I see things, chances are that the OP is trolling and messing around to gain attention. No sane person would hop on a forum and brag about how he illegally exploited millions of dollars; it would raise suspicions and possibly lead to an investigation against him.
I know that bragging on the open about your past criminal activities do not really makes a lot of sense to us, but a great deal of criminals are caught precisely because they cannot keep quiet about what they did and they want to share their stories with others, then eventually one of those persons that heard the story get in trouble and they use the information they know to try to reduce or completely eliminate any charges that may have come their way.