When you start putting on an act, it starts getting silly.
Being real goes a long way... and it really isn't hard to be humble and open when writing PR's.
Trying to "fool" people adds an unsavory characteristic to an already unsavory situation.
Instead of putting a PR about the upcoming payments for March 17th... he addresses requests about putting out a list of patents that they were granted.
Who would be asking that versus asking about the possible default?
Like you said, desperation seems to be what it looks like.