Is it, though? I assume they tried to reach out to him, and he just said "no I'm real and not spam thanks bye".

WRT your second suggestion, I disregard that option because:

1. Even though I own the trademark, I'm not selling anything. I wanted to own the trademark to avoid these kind of situation from happening.

2. IMO It's just not fair that I have to challange a scammer in this race, since he doesn't even have the right to be there in the first place. Google should just fix their broken process.