It's possible that the "brand new laptop" Gavin received wasn't brand new at all and was opened, flashed, and resealed, or perhaps Craig has obtained a fake trusted certificate for electrum.org and MITM'd the connection on his home/work wifi.
The explanations for how Craig Wright could have deceived so many credible people are getting incredibly complicated. If in the end Craig managed to dup four major news media outlets, Bitcoin devs, Matonis, and apparently other members of the so-called "Satoshi Team," then fuck, he deserves the win - maybe not credit for having invented Bitcoin, but for being such a brilliant conman!
The easily-debunked cryptographic proof offered up so far has in fact supported suspicions that he is a conman. If Craig Wright turns out not to be Satoshi, and Gavin was not hacked or coerced, then I feel sad for Gavin Andresen's reputation, as well as Bitcoin's as a whole.
I'll also be relieved if he is a conman, because anything else would be sorely disappointing...
It is unreasonable to assume that someone who is not an expert in stage magic can detect/defeat basic deception techniques. I don't know about this particular case but I see no reason to rule out deception, anyone can be fooled especially if they are specifically targeted.
I've been victim to a fraud a couple of years ago, and in retrospect it's amazing how gullible I was -- conning is so easy because we tend to trust people by default. And in this case, all the people who fell for the fraud probably really wanted this to be true, which probably affected their judgement.
Social engineering works. This is why being conned feels like such a violation. People think it can't happen to them. Just like advertising only works on those other dumb sheeple.
EDIT> Also, re: media. If you've ever given an interview and then been surprised at what was actually written / reported, this wouldn't surprise you. In this case, the media is relying heavily on the tech experts. It's only necessary to con the techies.
