How did he have time to do his day job with all this scamming on the side?
I think a different verb may apply in this particular case.
But I'd also suggest that setting up small companies isn't THAT much work. Funneling other people's designs to those companies isn't THAT much work either.
Surely, the scheming took time and effort and I'm not saying he wasn't working hard. But the scheming described doesn't exactly sound like a superhuman feat for the ages.