Equally crazy is everything else the 'con-man did'. He wrote an incredible book in a few months, while always on the move, which has insights to south/central American culture/life that simply wasn't known in his time and are just now being discovered/understood. This being the tip of the iceberg in his accomplishments in his short life before being killed. No this can't be a con-man, never has there been such a great one. He must have been a genius, of the likes there has never been before or since.
Or perhaps he was telling the truth, and he was a Prophet of God.