>>>His belief, and mine as well, is that "Grover" 1) acted for unknown reasons; and 2) faked Michel out completely. For sure we don't know how or why it was done. There are any number of possible scenarios besides the one you describe. Kevin could have been chosen semi-randomly as a high profile forum member.
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>Do you have examples of this ever happening before in real life? I know there are plenty of thrillers where false trails are laid to implicate the butler or for revenge by a jilted lover, but we're talking about a tricky online subterfuge lasting months and requiring a monumental investment of effort for such a petty result.

not sure we visualize similar scenarios ;-)
Assuming the person KG did not create not Grover, somebody else did with an IP/behaviour trail leading to KG IP/machines.
Occam's razor would make me suspicious of coworkers able to guess/find out his pwds -
and in such a scenario Michels more direct probings are automatically firewalled.
Perhaps Grover started alltogether differently and morphed only later...