I've said this in other threads on this but I think "lying" is an extreme exaggeration for what happened here. I've read the whole listing and I see nothing claiming that he designed the whole thing from scratch (and he would be an idiot if he had tried to, as all of the parts are commonly available).
Basically he offered a router that was pre-configured to use TOR. There are lots of people not comfortable with/capable of flashing their routers to use tools like OpenWRT or DD-WRT...and for good reason, as a novice could pretty easily brick their router. It's obvious by the response that a plug-and-play solution does offer value to some people, whether he painstakingly designed the hardware or not.
I wouldn't quote me on this, but if I remember right the original kickstarter did make a claim about it being custom hardware. They removed the few sentences talking about it from the kickstarter page once people started asking about it.
Right below it is a statement "By our fourth round of prototypes we had created a model with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU" which uses the word "created" not "found" or "utilized".
1. "I am claiming my device is not the same as the wt3020 off the shelf hardware yes." Self explanatory. He then states that "maybe" the only difference is the amount of storage, which is odd considering he just denied it's the same thing.
2. "Yes that is my picture and yes, I am claiming that the anonabox is not an off the shelf WT3020" Ditto.
3. "Yes honestly that does look like the same circuit board. I can't help but wonder if the factory that we sourced is going to try to sell them too." Here he even infers that their design was stolen and being resold behind their back. Again, this heavily infers they created/designed the board, and clearly denies knowledge of any other existing boards like his, meaning they didn't simply take an existing board and ask for more storage.
Which has the line "This piece has been corrected from an earlier version that included his claims that both the board and case were custom-built for the project." Note the explicit statement that they designed everything.
Wired further stated "he clarified that the router was created from a stock board." Clarified from the original statement that it was all custom designed.
Wired ends with "Germar also says now that the case was supplied by Gainstrong and was not custom-designed by the Anonabox developers, a partial reversal of how he initially described it to WIRED."
So, yes, he DID lie. He explicitly claimed it was all custom hardware multiple times, even when DIRECTLY confronted with evidence to the contrary. Only after several days of this did he begin to walk back his comments.
Basically he offered a router that was pre-configured to use TOR. There are lots of people not comfortable with/capable of flashing their routers to use tools like OpenWRT or DD-WRT...and for good reason, as a novice could pretty easily brick their router. It's obvious by the response that a plug-and-play solution does offer value to some people, whether he painstakingly designed the hardware or not.