It sounds like a hoax, indeed.
Also, I didn't read it thouroughly, but it seems these people will be choosing 3 postulants who, by the way, have to be "specific" when choosing the keywords they want to rank for ( as they say, can't pick "weight loss").
I read: we'll pick medium-long tail keywords in niches not incredibly competitive and use them as testimonials ( the number of competitors is not all: it's not the same facing a competition of 4 million sites on "jokes" than on "search engine optimization" or "make money online" )