Why would Craig (falsely) claim to own not-Satoshi addresses, instead of claiming Satoshi addresses that are less likely to be used (due to exposure risk)?

I think it's more correctly stated that it's not public knowledge if they were mined by Satoshi or not. One can say they were not part of the "Satoshi miner pattern" that was identified years ago, but we don't know exactly how many of the blocks mined outside that pattern were or were not Satoshi's. Hence my "might".