This person, whoever they are, is very disturbed. They seem to crave attention - I would posit they are extremely narcissistic along with being a pathological liar (the two diagnosis are often correlated). Hope they are caught, although I'm not sure how... Probably have several different online/electronic identities would be my guess.
The Russian photojournalist that commented on the article and news of this big lie said that in this new digital online age institutions and organizations need to come up with better means of doing background checks on individuals making claims and submissions of work. I agree.