He's allegedly inflated his usage numbers in order to secure/sustain membership in the PHP-FIG. There are several high-profile projects in the group, so I imagine getting your project listed as a member adds some prestige and is good for resume building.

PHP-FIG: http://www.php-fig.org/

IF all his fun and games worked he could have owned a popular framework, sometimes that works out to be very valuable. Lots of people and companies have considered that enough justification to shill HN in the past.

Some developers really do want to be rockstars, I suppose.