Why would they spend a year of time and money to issue an offering that they didn't want to raise money from?

I don't think Parsi is that stupid. I do think they are trying to build the business the legal way but just failing at doing so.

This is more of an issue of incompetence than a grand conspiracy to scam and/or deceive everyone. They could just issue themselves shares in one version or another if that were the case.

There is no X-Files plot here.