[cfmcdonald]

Author here. Thank you for the reference, this is very helpful. The name "Colonel Whitney" came from a 1984 Stan Veit article: https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/computer_magazine_madness...

Obviously he misremembered the name. I wasn't able to find other references to corroborate more details of the scam, but of course now I know that I wasn't searching for the correct name.