It's actually fairly easy to cheat statistics. It happens literally all the time in Academia. There's a thousand ways to make a statistical analysis believably say what you want in a way where even other professionals don't realize is the case unless an expert does a thorough analysis.
It's easy to cheat a statistic you create. It's quite hard to cheat a statistic where you don't know who will look when at which particular data points.
I did not intend to attack or defend Hans with that statement, I just wanted to point out that both you and the original comment could be right at the same time. That being said, it's quite funny that this case showed both sides.
This is how they find accounting fraud as well.