Basically he offered a router that was pre-configured to use TOR. There are lots of people not comfortable with/capable of flashing their routers to use tools like OpenWRT or DD-WRT...and for good reason, as a novice could pretty easily brick their router. It's obvious by the response that a plug-and-play solution does offer value to some people, whether he painstakingly designed the hardware or not.
Right below it is a statement "By our fourth round of prototypes we had created a model with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU" which uses the word "created" not "found" or "utilized".
Then there was this AMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_augus...
In it he says things like:
1. "I am claiming my device is not the same as the wt3020 off the shelf hardware yes." Self explanatory. He then states that "maybe" the only difference is the amount of storage, which is odd considering he just denied it's the same thing.
2. "Yes that is my picture and yes, I am claiming that the anonabox is not an off the shelf WT3020" Ditto.
3. "Yes honestly that does look like the same circuit board. I can't help but wonder if the factory that we sourced is going to try to sell them too." Here he even infers that their design was stolen and being resold behind their back. Again, this heavily infers they created/designed the board, and clearly denies knowledge of any other existing boards like his, meaning they didn't simply take an existing board and ask for more storage.
THEN he starts to walk it back, admitting to Wired they didn't design the board as they had first claimed as noted here: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/tiny-box-can-anonymize-everythi...
Which has the line "This piece has been corrected from an earlier version that included his claims that both the board and case were custom-built for the project." Note the explicit statement that they designed everything.
Wired further stated "he clarified that the router was created from a stock board." Clarified from the original statement that it was all custom designed.
Wired ends with "Germar also says now that the case was supplied by Gainstrong and was not custom-designed by the Anonabox developers, a partial reversal of how he initially described it to WIRED."
So, yes, he DID lie. He explicitly claimed it was all custom hardware multiple times, even when DIRECTLY confronted with evidence to the contrary. Only after several days of this did he begin to walk back his comments.