This was pre 2011 so cpu mining times, you def could have rented somer servers and mined a lot of coins back then. If he did or not is what iam curious about. There wasn't as many scams back then those came later as money started entering the space..
GPU become main choice in 2010 and FPGA become main choice in 2011. Besides, AFAIK CEX.IO was the first cloud mining in 2013. So i think you misremember.