Please remember that he wanted the money to go to charity, and that Dr. D could send it there directly.
You can all debate the merits of the video and Cleary's motives, but the one thing you can't do is claim he wanted to rip them off.
If someone scams money from me and donates it to charity, or even scams me into donating to charity when I was not intending to, is that not "ripping me off"? I agree its not ripping me off for the person's own personal gain, but I'm not sure it is not ripping them off.
Having gone through this thread at some length, here is my theory about this whole deal:
1. Cleary has a beef with Dr. Dave.
2. Cleary believes that the science guys (or at least these science guys) won't accept things that are not in accordance with their own views and demand proof that is impossible.
3. Accordingly, he believes that the whole challenge was bogus because even if done properly they would not believe it and therefore would not pay.
4. To prove his theory, he created a video that he thought complied with the rules (except that he did something, like maybe edited it to combine a bank shot and a masse on the 9, as I suggested days ago).
5. He refuses to directly answer the question about editing the video because he draws some line in this own mind about creating the video and actually lying about editing (as opposed to answering a ton of questions in a way that might make you think he has denied editing, which he has not).
6. Cleary figured he could trap Dave into paying (or better yet into reneging on the proposition), because Dave said he would pay if you complied with the rules.
7. Because Cleary wants to prove his point and stick it to them, and not personally profit, he really would have donated the money to charity.
8. Cleary made a mistake in not complying with the details of the proposition. If you are going to use a very technical argument to say the other guy should pay even if it might be a fake, you'd better make sure you get it right.
Of course, all of this is just a theory.