Good theory, except that NoodleDoodle wasn't even a team member at the time. He discovered the first issue on his own, as an independent miner, and made us aware of it. If he were a scammer he would have just kept that to himself I guess, but instead he worked with us to get it released and that collaboration led to him becoming part of the team. To be clear though, the official team was not really announced or even fully defined until Missives #1 which came a month or so later.
Please forgive the reply to myself but I would rather quote and correct here rather than edit and be accused of some kind of cover up or deception.
After checking my notes, ND was indeed part of the original team (though as I said the team wasn't really defined as such), and my recollection was incorrect. He wasn't quite as active in some of the early discussions, but he was definitely a part of it. Still, if his intention was to scam he would have just kept his discovery to himself. He didn't. Instead he released his discovery and continued to work on further miner improvements for public release.
This is clearly off topic for BBR and I apologize for polluting the thread with it, but there seems to be a bit of XMR hate here. Guys, work on building your own coin (and indeed borrowing good ideas from one another), not trying to succeed by tearing down another one. That's what we do.