I don't think it's that puzzling, at least in one sense.
A big part of why the PIPE investors are buying into it, is probably because they can buy shares at a steep discount to the market, $0.80.
They may also suffer from the same problem that a number of the long-time true believers have; they disregard the seriousness of the litigation and all of the lies that Bordynuik has told, and choose to believe the BS.
There wouldn't be any penny stock scams, relying on too-good-to-be true fairytales to scam people, if this kind of thing didn't happen all the time.
Regarding the "seasoned manager" being CEO, he might just want to fatten up his retirement fund, and this is an easy way to do it. He was retired, after all.
He certainly isn't doing it because he has some kind of a vision and actually wants to be a CEO and build a company; Bordynuik calls all the shots with his majority, so that's not part of the equation.
All he has to do is be Bordynuik's puppet and collect the checks until they run out of money, or get shut down by regulators.
Note that this guy took the job of being CEO, with one of the terms being that Bordynuik will never tell him or anyone else the secret to the catalyst.
Nobody in their right mind would take on the responsibility of being the CEO of a publicly traded company, if the CTO being sued for fraud by the SEC was the only one who claimed to know the one and only secret on which the entire success of the company, and all the shareholders' money, depended.